With all due respect, my first Japanese textbook was written by two PhD holders who teach at France’s top institute of higher education for Asian languages (Inalco), and it contained kanji errors. I also found confusing statements like the idea that it is rare for conversations to be purely in one register, with no clear guidelines given for cases where it is possible for people to switch registers between sentences. I’m not saying these things aren’t facts of Japanese usage, but what’s the point of mentioning them if you can’t provide guidelines for learners beyond ‘less polite or more polite language gets mixed in if you’re talking to people you’re more or less close to’? I mean, OK, I just looked up an old edition of the course, so I now realise that some of my confusion was due to my own forgetfulness/rushing through the course to learn Japanese as quickly as I could, but the fact remains that their expertise didn’t exactly shine through in these respects. Perhaps more pertinently, I’m from one of France’s best (OK, not in the top 10, but it’s usually within the top 40, and it’s been as high as the top 20 in the last 10 years) prépas, and all my English teachers had to sit a national exam that only certifies them if they rank within a certain percentage nationwide. I think most of them have master’s degrees in English, if not a PhD. Two of the three teachers I had graduated from two of France’s very best schools for teaching and research: the Écoles Normales Supérieures. That didn’t stop them – well, one of them in particular, to be fair – from inventing rules that didn’t exist in English and rejecting perfectly respectable translations into English. Similarly, I’ve had teachers with qualifications like a PhD in language pedagogy and a supposed CEFR C1 level in English correct me for mistakes that don’t exist according to English grammar, or have difficulty expressing themselves on technical subjects like how engineers might contribute to society, even though I didn’t use any words that one wouldn’t easily find in a newspaper. As far as Japanese goes, you’ll notice that in some places in Tobira, the explanations of grammar points don’t line up with what mainstream monolingual Japanese dictionaries say, like the significance of なくてはいかない and なくてはならない. While all the authors seem to be native speakers, if you look at where the authors got their qualifications from, you’ll notice almost all of them hold master’s degrees in Japanese from top American universities. Only one or two of them hold PhDs or master’s degrees from Japanese universities. The correlation is obvious, even if I cannot prove causation.
Call me an elitist, but based on my experience so far, qualifications and positions held for language expertise do not necessarily count for much unless they are from the region where the language is natively spoken, and even more so if they are awarded by or held at a centre for excellence in that language. As such, Dr Rubin’s long-standing relationship with Harvard certainly impresses me, but the only bit of experience on that list that strongly supports his competence as far as I’m concerned is his stints at the research centre in Kyoto. I also consider earning the respect and admiration of native speakers, especially those attentive to their own usage, more credible than an average degree. I’m not saying Dr Rubin doesn’t have any of those, but that’s the reason I rarely take language teaching experience or language degrees seriously anymore: I’ve just seen too many counterexamples who prove that having a degree or even a long teaching career doesn’t mean you’re a competent user of a language. On the other hand, if you told me a non-native learner of a language became a professor in that language in a country where that language is natively spoken… you’d get my attention instantly.
PS: Just so you know, I’m just as harsh – or even more so – towards myself when it comes to languages. I’m rarely comfortable with calling myself ‘fluent’ in something unless I’m at least indistinguishable from a native when dealing with everyday topics and professional topics I should be familiar with. That is, if you read my writing or hear my voice without seeing my face, you shouldn’t be able to tell that I didn’t grow up in a country where that language is natively spoken. (By that standard, I should relinquish my claim to Chinese fluency soon because my lexicon has fallen into horrible disrepair. I need to find time for Chinese maintenance, but for now, it’s not urgent because I rarely need any Chinese knowledge in France.) The only differences I allow for are differences in mindset due to socio-cultural differences (but honestly, I should at least know what’s typical for a particular culture before stepping out of line or challenging it) and differences in terms of correctness (e.g. avoiding mistakes and slang that are common among native speakers, when appropriate). In other words, for me, fluency is ‘appearing to be an average native speaker’, and my usual goal is to speak and write like a highly educated native speaker. The only major domain in which I let myself off is everything related to highly specific household objects and growing up, because I’m not able to re-experience teaching adulthood with native speakers as my parents for every single language I learn. I’ll just have to deal with that as necessary when the time comes (e.g. if I meet the children of a friend, or if I date/marry a native speaker).
