Fukunaga 2006 FL literacy development using Anime ... - Oncourse

“Those anime students”: Foreign language literacy development through Japanese popular culture
We need to encourage students and ourselves to
see things from multiple sources and aspects.
What happens if anime students lose interest
in anime? I was once asked, “Don’t you think
students’ interest in popular culture is just a part
of adolescence? They will soon forget about it.” I
answered, “Yes for some students and no for others.”
I believe that the three participants in this
particular study are good examples of these multiple
positions. All three students began studying
Japanese motivated by their interest in anime and
its subcultures. However, anime played different
roles for each student. For Emily, anime was a
social activity. Thus, Emily stopped studying JFL
after establishing her agency in the anime community.
For Ted, studying JFL and his anime activities
were connected to his desire to become a
translator. Most likely, Ted will continue to study
JFL unless he changes his mind about a career.
From a Japanese teacher’s view, Sean seems to be
the most successful learner who is flexible enough
to shape-shift his portfolio as he passes through
different stages of life.
Sean is the closest to using anime as part of
his portfolio in Gee’s sense. In the time since the
data collection, Sean received a competitive scholarship
for study abroad, spent one year as an exchange
student in Japan, and expanded his
perspectives of that country. Now he has come
back and is searching for a graduate school, hoping
to be a Japan expert in areas of history, traditional
and contemporary culture and society,
linguistics, literature, and martial arts.
Whether these students continue studying
Japanese or not, their personal connections with
the target language and culture is a shared attitude
among them. All three participants simply wanted
to explore new worlds. These anime students engaged
with the new language and culture in unique
ways to meet their own needs and desires to know
about other people, languages, societies, and the
world. The new version of Japanese enthusiast—
the anime student—provides a new way of thinking
about how students engage with language and
suggests a more idealistic view of the process.
Implications for teachers
I have four suggestions for teachers that follow
directly from the findings of this study and my
ongoing work as a Japanese teacher and anime researcher.
1. Get to know the tools
Knowledge of anime students’ activities can help
teachers think about alternative ways to teach literacy
in a multiliteracies framework. It may also
help teachers appreciate students’ love of popular
culture. The participants in this study cited their
frequent use of the Internet for anime-related activities.
Chandler-Olcott and Mahar’s (2003b)
study also reminded us of “the need to consider
how those tools are specifically used as part of
membership in particular communities of practice”
(p. 381). It goes without saying that the
Internet is becoming a necessary tool for adolescents
to gather information and construct their
social identities by participating in online activities
as members of certain affinity groups. As Ted
suggested, some people prefer communicating
with others on the Internet rather than through
face-to-face interaction. We may be able to find
students’ potential literacy skills and their multiple
identities by paying attention to their activities
with popular culture texts and the Internet.
2. Appreciate authentic aspects of
other cultures
Appreciating authentic aspects of other cultures
is a better way to see language in context. In the
1960s, Japanese cultural aspects in anime had to
be taken out or modified to appeal to viewers in
the United States. Current anime fans enjoy
watching both types of anime, the new hybrid
type and anime based on authentic Japanese culture
with some twists such as Hikaru no go
(Hikaru’s Go). Instead of changing “other” cultural
norms into “American” norms, anime fans
have begun to respect Japanese culture and language.
Some of the students who liked watching
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