Silence in Japanese Classrooms: Activities and Factors in Capacities to Speak English

The Rugby World Cup in 2019 and the Tokyo Summer Olympics have provided incentives for the Japanese government and businesses to boost the population’s ability to speak the international lingua franca with overseas visitors. In fact, Japanese companies have pushed for decades for the government to improve the nation’s English-speaking education. Therefore, since the 1980s, there have been various policies to this end. For example, since 1987, the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme has invited assistant language teachers (ALTs) from various countries to team-teach in secondary schools, according to the Programme’s website (http://jetprogramme.org/en/history). More recently, such policies culminated in