Japanese working women and English study abroad

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT: This small-scale interpretive study explores Japanese young women who quit decent jobs and invest large amounts of money to travel and study in Canadian English language programmes for substantial lengths of time without future plans of career advancement through their overseas learning experience. The first part of the study explicates the Japanese societal and corporate culture, where those women come from and plan to return, and suggests that the supposed beneficial effects of TOEIC, English skills and overseas study experience on professional opportunities are implicitly restricted to the prospective and current managerial staff, predominantly men, who are already in good standing regardless of their English levels. In-depth interviews were conducted with three formerly employed women, complemented by descriptive statistics on another 22 women who responded to a questionnaire. This study demonstrates that the contextualized perspective of those women allows for a better understanding of the surface contradiction between the informants' decision to quit jobs and current commitment to overseas study, on the one hand, and on the other their low motivation for autonomous long-term English study in the past and in the future, current beginner-level English proficiency, and limited expectations for professional advancement through overseas study experience upon return home.