Japanese Language Education for Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement

This paper asks how Japanese language education for Filipino nurse candidates under JPEPA can be located in the Philippine socio-cultural settings, in order to provide academic grounding toward more meaningful policy making for both governments.

Foreign nurses’ entry to Japan presents a unique pattern of migration from the point of view of language learning. It pertains to adults who learn a foreign language from the beginning, yet are required to reach a high level of proficiency. Historically speaking, adult migrants often meant either unskilled workers who are not required high level of language skills; or skilled workers who already know the language of the host country. In any cases, the movement often took place from a former colony to a former sovereignty. As for Japan and the Philippines, although Japan occupied the Philippines for a few years during World War II, linguistically speaking, there is little colonial legacy among the young generation of Filipinos today. Also, due to the eligibility constrains, it is unlikely possible to find an EPA candidate who has received higher education in Japan.

The paper illustrates the socio-cultural situation in language practice in the Philippines at large and points to the both governments’ weakness in systematic understanding and addressing it — a) multi-lingual-ness with ambivalent relation with English as both colonial and global language; b) prominence of orality over literacy; c) weaker establishment of Japanese language education than other Southeast Asian countries in quantity and quality; and d) class issue in gaps in motivation and needs of Japanese language learning.