The Current State of Second Foreign Language Education in Japanese Universities, and One Tentative Plan for Its Reform

This paper consists of the following two sections: 1. The historical changes in second foreign language education 1.1. Prewar-days: The old high school system 1.2. Postwar period: Creation of a new university system after World War II 1.3. Postwar period: From the 1960s to the 1970s 1.4. Postwar period: The 1980s 1.5. Postwar period: From the 1990s to today 2. Required second foreign language learning models and their level descriptions 2.1. The 1st task: To meet societal needs for acquisition of higher level language abilities 2.2. How to foster intermediate/advanced language abilities 2.3. Attainment targets in intermediate/advanced courses 2.4. The 2nd task: To meet the needs of multilingualism and multiculturalism in today's world 2.5. How to develop fundamental language ability and cross-cultural communicative competence 2.6. Attainment targets in basic courses In the first section, by looking back on the historical changes in second foreign language education in Japanese universities mainly after World War II, we try to grasp how the present conditions and problems have come into existence. In the second section, we discuss, at first, what kind of second foreign language abilities are needed in Japanese society today and, in response to the demands, we propose two types of learning models which could be realized by feasible limited reforms in the current situation: 1. An elective three-stage course of four years for a limited number of students who want to acquire the intermediate or advanced language competence necessary for their own diverse research or professional fields, 2. A compulsory basic course for bringing up not only fundamental language ability, but also for cross-cultural communicative competence in broader varieties of languages, such as Chinese, Korean, Indonesian-Malay, Arabic, Persian, Spanish (Portuguese), German, French, Russian. Italian, and Hindi-Urdu. We also discuss, on the basis of the CEF (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) (Council of Europe 2001), attainment targets for each course, and propose as follows: Elective Intermediate/Advanced Course (......) Compulsory Basic Course (......