The Writings of

derived from there.

E. K. Venables and published on 20 June 1930, according to a first

edition in the IRLT Library.
_{31 Dated according to an announcement in Bulletin 33 (April 1927): 5.
32 Dated according to an announcement in Bulletin 33 (April 1927): 5.
33 Dated, and all other details according to a first advertisement in Bulletin 34 (May 1927): 6 . This publication may have constituted a reissue in pamphlet form of 1926e, which has the same title.
34 Dated according to first advertisement in Bulletin 34 (May 1927): 6.
35 Dated according to Bulletin 34 (May 1927): 5.
36 Dated according to Bulletin 36 (July–Aug. 1927): 5.}
37 The 1931 edition referred to indicates 17 October as the date of initial publication, but the first edition may in fact have been issued earlier in 1927. It is promised ‘in a month’ in Bulletin 31 (Feb. 1927): 7, and shown to be for sale in an advertisement in Bulletin 32 (March, 1927): 8. The only subsequent addition to the series we have come across is English through Questions and Answers. Book III (Part I), written by A. S. Hornby and published on 15 May 1929, according to a first edition in the IRLT Library.

Chapter 5 Tokyo II (1928–36)

1928
In January, Palmer spoke at Doshisha University in Kyoto on ‘The reformed teaching of English’ and ‘Intonation’, then gave further lectures in the Kansai area. In February he spoke at the Tokyo Higher Normal School, and from 17 April to 21 June at meetings of a recently formed ‘Association for the New Method of English Language Teaching’ (Ozasa 1995a: 121). From 23 to 31 July there was also a series of talks on new methods of English teaching for middle schools (summarized in 1928l) at a seminar held – exceptionally – under the auspices of the Department of Education, at Tokyo School of Foreign Languages.

October saw the foundation of the Association of Foreign Teachers in Japan (Imura 1997: 259), in which both Palmer and H. Vere Redman were to play active roles. The Fifth IRET Convention was held from 11 to 13 October at the First Tokyo Prefectural Middle School.

From about this time onwards Japanese teachers associated with the IRET appear to have increasingly appropriated the ideas and materials with which they had been provided. The Convention itself became rapidly ‘nationalized’ after 1928, with most of the proceedings being carried out in Japanese from that year onwards (Sarvis 1928: 2). Demonstration lessons by Japanese teachers – as opposed to debates on structural reform or observation of demonstrations by foreign teachers ­– were by now becoming the focal point of Convention activity (Ozasa 1995a: 46–50).

As we have seen, a ‘Reader System’ ranging ‘satellite’ materials around a core textbook containing reading passages had begun to be offered to Japanese teachers by the end of 1927, but the appropriateness of this model in practice was yet to be determined. Over the next few years, as feedback was received from teachers, it became clear that slight modifications were necessary, but the system remained in place fundamentally unchanged until the outbreak of the Pacific War. At the same time, an increasing number (although never a large number) of schools and teachers appear to have adopted IRET materials and procedures, further adapting them to local needs.

From 1927­–8 onwards, then, two strands of IRET research and development appear to emerge: firstly, the further evolution up until the Pacific War of appropriate ‘reformed’ methodology through teacher-research by Japanese educators themselves (considered further under ‘1935’ below), and, secondly, a shift to a concern with learning ‘content’ in Palmer’s own increasingly linguistics-oriented research publications for the IRET up until his departure from Japan in 1936. Palmer was later to recall that the year 1927–8 saw ‘The realizing of the need for an objective survey of the English linguistic symbols’, which was to involve henceforth ‘research not only on the psychology of language-learning but also on many baffling problems of English lexicology’ (Palmer 1933y: 4; see also 1928s for a somewhat tongue-in-cheek account of his growing ‘obsession’ with lexicology).

Although Palmer might thus appear to have retired to some extent from the front line of reform in order to concentrate on background research of a more linguistic, code-focused nature, it is clear that this work – at least in its initial (1928–31) phase – was undertaken with a practical eye to the provision of more appropriate contents (in the first instance, lexical contents) for learning, in the Japanese middle school context. Official sanction had been given to this new line of research at the 1927 Convention, where a request was made by certain members for attention to be turned to the what (as well as the how) of middle school English education, ‘including . . . determining of the number and sort of words, phrases, standard sentences and grammar mechanisms’.¹ Palmer later interpreted this request as having implied, more specifically, ‘the compilation, first, of a limited English word-list and, secondly, of a selection of [collocations]’, adding that ‘It was further suggested that the Department of Education might ultimately adopt or recommend the resultant lists as corresponding to the vocabulary required of an entrant to the schools of higher grade’ (1933p: 1).

From Palmer’s own point of view, the experience of writing the ‘Standard Readers’ with the need for ‘plain English’ (as emphasized at the 1925 Convention) in mind may have encouraged him to tackle traditionalists on their own home ground, via a questioning of prevalent assumptions of what should be allowed to ‘stand for’ written English and, indeed, grammar. While his own Readers had been written in a plain, colloquial style, offering clear appended examples in illustration of major grammatical rules, other textbooks available at the time (and, even more importantly, university entrance examinations) tended to include many old-fashioned, literary, or esoteric words and constructions. Palmer’s ‘lexicological turn’ (itself following on from his earlier shift towards a greater focus on the twin aims of reading and writing in English) was therefore to bear fruit – at the end of its first phase – in several concrete (1930–1) suggestions for word lists which were then immediately applied in the production of new materials for the middle school context. The nature of grammar was to be more quickly considered, in 1928o–r, although questions of structural and collocational grading were not explicitly addressed at this still early stage.

1928a (Jan.). ‘Reflections concerning certain foreign teachers’ (Editorial). Bulletin 40: 1–2.

1928l (July). ‘The reformed English teaching in the middle grade schools: Synopsis of lectures to be given at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, July 1928’. Bulletin 46: 3.

On a lighter note, the involvement of both Palmer and his daughter in amateur dramatic activities in Tokyo and Karuizawa was reflected in two 1929 publications. While Dorothée published an annotated phonetic edition – complete with tone-marks – of a comedy by H. H. Davies entitled The Mollusc (Dorothée Palmer 1929), Palmer co-wrote, directed and published a (1929s) revue in three acts, first performed in Karuizawa in 1928, then in Tokyo in 1929, which was designed to instruct as well as entertain with regard to the functions of the League of Nations, of which he was an ardent supporter.

In his 1929d editorial, Palmer additionally promised a ‘set of Side Readers for supplementary rapid reading’, but readers of this kind were not in fact to be produced until 1931 (after which they began to be issued in great quantities). Palmer is likely to have determined that lexicological research work was not yet far enough advanced for side readers to be confidently compiled, since the whole of the following year (until and beyond the October Convention) was spent in careful consideration of issues which he felt needed to be addressed before specific proposals could be made for vocabulary limitation (and text simplification) on the basis of frequency counts. Thus, the following articles and editorials consistently raise questions of definition with regard to the nature of ‘words’ and ‘idioms’: 1929i, 1929l, 1929m, 1930b, 1930e, 1930i.

In his report to the Convention (1929r), although specific proposals for middle school vocabulary limitation were still not in sight, Palmer felt able to report that ‘exceptionally great’ progress had been made in the area of preliminary definition, expressing at the same time ‘a suspicion that those engaged in counting the occurrences of words and idioms [in the field of statistical lexicology] have not taken adequate precautions to ascertain exactly what it is that they are counting’ (p. 5). With this side-swipe at contemporary American statistical lexicologists including E. L. Thorndike, Palmer presents his own provisional classification scheme, and in the process casts further light on his conception of the two-way relationship between research work connected with ‘linguistic pedagogy’ and research in other linguistic sciences (thus he ventures to suggest that IRET research has already had something to say to those involved in such fields as phonetics, grammar, and statistical lexicology, as well as in the more practical area of language course designing).