Jun Nakayama - Faculty Interview
Participant Profile
Jun Nakayama
Text linguistics, German language education, Conference interpreter training1977: Completed the Master's Program in German Literature, Graduate School of Humanities, Gakushuin University 1980: Withdrew from the Doctoral Programs at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies, Bielefeld University, after completing coursework 1981: Full-time Lecturer, Meiji Gakuin University 1995: Professor, Faculty of Economics *Profile and position are as of the time of the interview.
Jun Nakayama
Text linguistics, German language education, Conference interpreter training1977: Completed the Master's Program in German Literature, Graduate School of Humanities, Gakushuin University 1980: Withdrew from the Doctoral Programs at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies, Bielefeld University, after completing coursework 1981: Full-time Lecturer, Meiji Gakuin University 1995: Professor, Faculty of Economics *Profile and position are as of the time of the interview.
Living Through an Era of Change
The 1980s, when I began my teaching career, was a time when university education was undergoing major reforms. The general education curriculum was abolished, and foreign language education, which had been one of the pillars of the liberal arts curriculum, was also exposed to a great wave of change. It was an era of debate over whether foreign language education in universities should focus on liberal arts or emphasize practical application. Needless to say, in response to social changes and internationalization, classes have since shifted from a focus on reading comprehension to an emphasis on practical application.
Before becoming a full-time faculty member at the Faculty of Economics, I taught German at the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics for several years starting in 1981. At that time, a German class in the Faculty of Economics had over 50 students. When I returned in 1995, the number had already decreased to around 30, and class sizes are even smaller now. While the increase in the number of languages to choose from is one factor, another reason for the decline in learners may be the mismatch between expectations for foreign languages that can be learned and the image of the German language.
I first encountered the German language in 1960. For more than half a century since then, I have been involved with this language, and the main German-speaking countries, Germany and Austria, have also undergone significant changes. As you know, Germany was reunified between 1989 and 1990 after being divided into East and West, and Austria, which had been a permanently neutral country, joined the EU.
If we can convey these changes in the German-speaking world over the past 20-some years more multi-dimensionally through the German language, perhaps expectations for German will also change slightly. I hope that students of the Faculty of Economics will continue to be motivated to learn various languages, view society from diverse perspectives, identify the path forward while analyzing change, and become people who lead the way.
(Interview conducted in January 2016)