Psychological Studies

The Path of Fifty Years and Future Prospects

Abstract

This essay reviews how papers relating to psychology, published in the Journal for Japanese Language Teaching, have developed over the fifty years of its history. In the first period, from 1962 to 1985, almost none of the papers dealt with psychology, but the few that did are significant for providing the seed for future developments. The second period, 1985 to 1999, was marked by the appearance of papers on interlanguage, and the overall emphasis shifted from instructor-centered to learner-centered approaches, with an increasing variety of research devoted to the strategies, styles, motivations and processes of learning. In the third period, 1999 to 2012, theory was introduced, leading to the pursuit of universality, while research on the verification of theory became important in the attempt to apply theoretical results back in the classroom. The contribution of psychology has been a consistent recognition that language teaching is not the injection of knowledge, but rather involves support for learners to make use of their own abilities and knowledge in language acquisition.