MM NEWS No.6 2003.3 47

Self-Access Centers (SAC) in University-Level Foreign Language Education: Theoretical and Practical Considerations

Robert J. Fouser

Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Language Acquisition and Education fouser@maia.eonet.ne.jp

"Though it has long been the dream of language learners to do without a teacher and to substitute self-teaching aids for him, books and machines often had the opposite effect" (Kelly, 1969, p. 274). 1. Introduction Throughout history, the physical locus of foreign language learning has followed broader changes in the locus of learning and teaching.1 Until the emergence of mass education in the 19th century, foreign language learning was largely a private and autonomous activity that focused on reading mastery of sacred religious texts. For most of human history, foreign language learners, nearly all of whom came from privileged classes, had access to tutors, either knowledgeable peers or senior mentors. Study materials were limited to a sacred canon of texts, such as the Bible, the Koran, and The Analects of Confucius (論語), to name but a few.

The spread of public schools and universities in the 19th century brought foreign language learning into the realm of public life for the first time in history. Instead of learning autonomously, students learned together, in rows, in the classroom. The expert teacher, not peers or mentors, became the main resource person, and sacred texts gave way to textbooks about the language (though perhaps equally sacred as the voice of the nation state).2 The rapid spread of public schools in the west and Meiji Japan created a skeptical backlash that reflects itself in other forms of cultural production, such as the mid-19th century drawings of the French satirist Grandville (Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, 1803-1847) or the grotesque prints of Kawanabe Gyōsai (1831-1889). Both artists portray the language class (French and English, respectively) as if it were the latest form of torture in which the teacher tries to pound the minutiae of grammar into students.

The 19th century paradigm of foreign language learning remains the 1 See Kelly (1969) for a comprehensive history of foreign language education until the 1960s. 2 For a case study of Meiji-period English education in the Sapporo School of Agriculture (Sapporo Nogakkō), see Toyama (1992).

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norm in Japan today. A visit to a popular "cram school" or a third-year high school class at a competitive "academic high school" will reveal the 19th century paradigm in its purist form. The enduring strength of the 19th century paradigm is not unique to Japan and it has produced discontents everywhere. Yet for all the discontent, it remains the most common form of foreign language teaching today.

The tension between the endurance of the 19th-century paradigm and the endless search for something new has grown steadily since the middle of the 20th century. Each new wave of approaches, methods, materials, and technologies has tried to make a clean break from text-teacher-centered education of the 19th century. Each as failed, but together, like the scientists slogging away at Thomas Kuhn's "normal science," they have weakened the 19th century paradigm, putting it under increasing duress. The most recent and perhaps most powerful attempt to undermine the 19th-century paradigm comes from the proponents of learner autonomy (e.g., Little, 1991, 1999), the belief that responsibility for learner lies in the hands of learners instead of in the hands of teachers in classrooms.

Of all the 20th-century attacks on 19th-century paradigm, learner autonomy has been the most successful because it moves the physical locus of foreign language learning from the public realm, as manifested by the school, back to the private realm of self-study and autonomous interaction. In this sense, learner autonomous is neo-classical in its evocation of classical modes of learning. The neo-classicism of learner autonomy put it at odds with the ethos of equal opportunity that pervades education today. At heart, learner autonomy means leaving learners alone to do what they please, whereas the equal opportunity ethos demands that institutions ensure that learners have the same opportunity, if not experience. At the university level, where the tension between the 19th-century paradigm and learner autonomy manifests itself as a debate between "the lecture" and "student-centered classes," foreign language education finds itself at the center of efforts to promote learner autonomy because 19th-century teacher-text-centered classes have been (notoriously) ineffective in helping learners develop proficiency in the spoken language.

One of the most recent approaches to integrating learner autonomy into the university-level foreign language teaching has been the development of "self-access centers" (henceforth, SACs).3 Many SACs have developed from previously existing language laboratories that were designed to for classroom teaching, while others have been carved out of foreign language teaching

3 For various perspectives on SACs, see Aston (1996), Cotterall & Crabble (1999), Gardner & Miller (1999), Karlsson, Kjisik, & Nordlund (1997), Sturtridge (1997).

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centers that offer (or offered) extra-curricular language courses. Still others have been established explicitly as a SAC, often with libraries, language laboratories, or other existing university facilities. A small number of centers exit only virtually as websites run from offices in foreign language departments or teaching centers. In this paper, I will investigate the current state of SACs in universities around the world in an attempt the answer the following questions: How do SACs define their mission? How are SACs organized and administered? How are SACs funded, both at the establishment and operational phases? What role do SACs play in integrating new technologies into foreign

language learning? How is the effectiveness of SACs evaluated by students, teachers, and

administrators? How have SACs influenced traditional classroom-based foreign language

teaching? What is the future of SACs?

No survey of SACs can be complete because the number and character of institutions is in flux. Instead of attempting a complete survey, I will limit my discussion to SACs that have achieved prominence in the literature or that have particular relevance to foreign language education in Japan. Information about the SACs surveyed in this paper comes from most from the relevant SAC website, but a more complete survey would have included visits to the relevant institutions. Throughout the paper, I will relate the discussion to Japan in an attempt to define the possible conditions that are conducive to establishing and maintaining SACs successfully. 2. History and Development of SACs SACs have three institutional roots, the library, the language laboratory, and the computer rooms.4 As the traditional repository of information and as the primary place for self-study in the university, the library was and is the center of self-access to information and an autonomous learning environment in the university. University libraries themselves have their roots in monastic libraries of the Middle Ages, and their function, particularly at large research universities, remains uncannily similar to the Middle Ages. The library remains central to 4 For an overview of the history of the language laboratory in the development of CALL, see "History of CALL Web Exhibition" by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Caillau: http://historyofcall.tay.ac.uk/index2.htm

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university life because it contains information that cannot be obtained easily elsewhere and that is accessible by all who wish to use, all in an environment that is assumes user autonomy.

The language laboratory, by contrast is new, emerging only in the last half of the 20th century. Unlike the library, the language laboratory was built as a unique form of classroom, not as a place for self-access to information. In traditional language laboratories, the flow of information was controlled to varying degrees by teachers who had unique control over the machinery in the room (Stack, 1966).

The computer room, a room with rows of computers emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with the spread of workstations and personal computers in education. Computer rooms were designed to be used for classes or self-study and many continue this dual function easily. As a place for self-study, computer rooms have much in common with the library in that they provide access to information and expect user autonomy. As a place for self-study, the computer room was more versatile than the language laboratory from the beginning because the computer is a tool that can meet a number of needs, whereas as the language laboratory was designed exclusively for language teaching.

With the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, these three environments began to merge. The library, long the sacred preserve of the text, adopted the computer as tool to increase the pool of information available and the ease of self-access. After falling into disrepute with the collapse of Audiolingualism, the language laboratory began to transform itself into a self-access multimedia learning environment. The computer room, the youngest of the three learning environments, has taken on wider use as the Internet has turned the computer into an important tool for accessing and creating information in nearly all academic fields. The spread of the World Wide Web in the late 1990s, in particular, made it possible to access information in foreign languages easily, and stimulated a boom in the use of the Internet in foreign language teaching.

The computer and the Internet have been the great leveler in bringing the functions of the library, the language laboratory, and the computer room together, leading to the emergence of a unified genre of learning space: "the multipurpose information access center." As used in this paper, a SAC is a "multipurpose information access center" that is devoted to enhancing, either in a primary or auxiliary role, foreign language education in the university. To this definition, the term "self-access" may be somewhat redundant, but it helps distinguish such centers from foreign language teaching centers and traditional language laboratories, both of which are devoted primarily to classroom teaching.

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3. Varieties of SACs Unlike the language laboratory, which spread rapidly during a short period of time because of its close relationship with the Audiolingual teaching methodology, SACs have emerged from existing educational institutions, often as a result of institutional reform and reorganization. As a result, SACs take more diverse forms, making them difficult to categorize. SACs continue to develop and take on new forms as changes in higher education, foreign language education, and information technology create new opportunities while undermining existing structures.

For all the diversity of SACs, several common varieties can be discerned: 1) language-laboratory-based SACs; 2) computer-room-based SACs; 3) teaching-unit-based SACs; 4) newly-developed SACs; 5) virtual SACs. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but, as will come clear in the following discussion, SACs that have a variety of materials, convenient access (physical and virtual), and receive strong institutional support make a stronger contribution to foreign language education than SACs that are limited in materials and access or that receive little institutional support.

Geographically, Europe remains the center of developments in SACs. In Europe, foreign language education has benefited from the continuing move toward European integration. Though much of the interest in foreign language education has naturally focused on English because of its dominance as an international language, interest in other European languages, including ethnic and regional or "lesser taught languages," as they care commonly referred to, has also grown significantly. In higher education, European integration has spawned a number of pan-European exchange programs, such as the Socrates/Erasmus Program, that have stimulate a need for language learning, particularly at advanced levels of proficiency, in universities. European integration has also created stronger demand for language skills in the workplace, thus stimulating ever larger numbers of students to seek out opportunities to study in another European country. The need to improve teaching and learning of a number of foreign languages, not just English, has provided the main stimulus for the development of SACs in Europe. Funding problems, particularly in the United Kingdom, have forced universities to cut back on the traditional reliance on full-time tenured staff. Many have found that in the long run, an effective SAC achieves more results for less money than hiring new staff. The spread of SACs in Europe led to the creation in 1991 of European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education (CercleS), a pan-European professional organization that brings together national associations of SACs to promote research on SACs through annual conferences

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and publications. By 2000, 250 language centers in 22 countries were represented by the national associations that are members of CercleS.

One of the largest and most active SACs is the Language Centre at the University of Cambridge. As illustrated in the figures below, the Centre offers a wide range of services and facilities to students and staff, while sponsoring research and materials development projects. No mention of its association with another academic unit is given, which suggests that it is an autonomous unit within the university.

Figure 1. Start Page of the Language Centre at the University of Cambridge Clicking the "What You Can Do" link reveals an extensive list of things that students can do at the Centre as illustrated in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2. Description of Language Centre Services

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Of interest here is the combination of self-study opportunities with advising, conversation exchange, and taught classes. The balance between self-study and interaction with other people is designed to give learners the widest range of choices in personalizing their language study. The Centre is also active in research, as shown in the list of activities in Figure 3 below, which allows it to contribute to overall research output of the university while developing materials that meet the specific needs of students at Cambridge. The existence of a research program also allows the Centre to compete for research funds inside and outside of the university.

Figure 3. Description of Language Centre Research Projects Another impressive feature of the Centre is the extremely wide range of materials available for self-study, as illustrated in Figure 4. Except for a few specialized institutions, the equation of English with "foreign language" in Japan makes impossible to imagine that a single institution would hold teaching materials for more than 140 languages. By offering such a wide range of materials, the Centre can meet the intellectual needs of students who want to classical and study lesser taught languages, thus linking the Centre to the academic and liberal arts tradition of the University of Cambridge.

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Figure 4. List of Materials at the Language Centre by Language Befitting the traditional rivalry between Cambridge and Oxford, the Language Centre at Oxford University is similar in scale and function. The most prominent difference, however, is that the Oxford Language Centre has a greater emphasis on CALL. As shown in Figure 5 below, the Centre as a webpage devoted to CALL and has an extensive collection of CALL software for learning many ancient and modern languages. Another interesting program of the Centre is the Lambda Project that is designed to help students who learned French and German in secondary school maintain their "A"-level language proficiency while at Oxford.

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Figure 5. Description of CALL Materials at the Language Centre at Oxford University

SACs are also gaining popularity in other parts of Europe, but few have as high an institutional profile as the SACs at Cambridge, Oxford, or other universities in Britain. One interesting SAC, the start page of which is illustrated in Figure 6, is at the University of Münster in Germany. Administered by the English Department and run by student volunteers, or "supervisors," the SAC offers access to computers designed to enhance language learning mainly through the organization of CALL software and Internet links into a coherent set of learning tools. The department-level, volunteer organization stands as an example of a small-scale networked SAC designed to meet the needs of a limited number of students with limited financial resources.

Figure 6. Description of Purpose of SAC at the University of Münster

The picture in North America, particularly the United States, is different because foreign language education is not as high a priority as it is in Europe. Foreign languages are not required in secondary school in the United States, and many universities, even some of that present themselves as "competitive universities," do not have a foreign language requirement for admission or graduation. Many SACs have thus emerged from previously existing language laboratories and, because of the weaker interest in foreign languages, have a lower institutional profile than SACs in Europe Audiolingualism spread faster and deeper in the United States than in Europe leaving a large number of language laboratories in universities, not all of which have transformed themselves into

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SACs. Foreign language education is required in Canada, but interest in learning languages other than English or French is not as high as in Europe.

An example of SACs at a North American university is the Language Resource Center at Harvard University. The start page of the website is shown in Figure 7 below. As the name implies, the emphasis of the Center and others like it in North America is on making language learning materials accessible to students, which reflects the language-laboratory origins of many SACs in North America. As a convenience to students, the Center is open late until 22:00. Unlike the autonomous SACs at Cambridge or Oxford, the Center belongs to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which is responsible for most undergraduate teaching in the liberal arts at Harvard. This type of organization is common in North America and implies that the main purpose of SACs is to support the undergraduate foreign language curriculum rather than language learning in the entire university community.

Figure 7. Start Page of the Language Resource Center at Harvard University The Language Resource Center at Columbia University, that start page of which is given in Figure 8, is similar to the SAC at Harvard. Of interest is the Center's efforts to adapt the language laboratory paradigm to current technology and student needs. The "Tapes Online" link, for example, allows learners who have access to the university LAN to listen to traditional language tapes on any computer that has audio capability. The "Future Plans" link provides a description that reveals as desire to move closer toward the British model of SAC: "The Humanities Media Center will refine its mission so as to better serve the needs of the University's language programs. In addition to the core

Self-Access Centers (SAC) in University-Level Foreign Language Education: Theoretical and Practical Considerations 57

languages, the New Language Resource Center will be active in supporting the instruction of less commonly taught languages and the specific needs of Columbia's Professional Schools."

Figure 8. Start Page of the Language Resource Center at Columbia University

The recent boom in English education in Asia has stimulated the development of SACs across the region. Unlike their European and North American counterparts, many of the new SACs in Asia have included a computer-based component of networked CALL and WELL materials from their foundation. This is particularly true in South Korea where broadband access spread rapidly from the late 1990s, giving South Korea the highest percentage of broadband diffusion in the world (Kim & Chŏng, 2002). Many SACs in Asia have developed from foreign language teaching institutions or are integrated into such institutions, whereas as relatively few have been founded exclusively as SACs, as in Europe, or have evolved from language laboratories, as in North America. This is perhaps because, until the 1980s, no Asian nation except Japan was developed enough to support widespread usage of language laboratories or other expensive facilities. Another possible explanation is that Japanese companies, such as Sony and Panasonic, dominate the market for language laboratory equipment.

One of the largest and most active SACs in Asia is at the Self-Access Centre at City University of Hong Kong. The start page of the website is show in Figure 9. Unlike the SACs that have been introduced so far, the Centre is an integral part of a large, autonomous language-teaching unit. Aside from providing students with facilities for self-study, the Centre emphasizes language

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advising, as reflected in the webpage illustrated in Figure 10, telling students clearly that "you get the chance to be your own boss."

Figure 9. Description of Self-Access Centre at City University of Hong Kong

Figure 10. Description of Language Learning Advisory Service at the Self-Access Centre at City University of Hong Kong

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Figure 11. Floor Plan of the Self-Access Centre at City University of Hong Kong The floor plan of the Self-Access Centre at City University of Hong Kong is illustrated in Figure 11. The spatial organization of a SAC is important because many SACs are forced to operate with limited space in existing university facilities. The above floor plan shows that nearly all of the space is devoted to student services, with only a small space being allocated to technicians. The placement of a reception desk a distance from the entrance encourages students to enter freely, creating a welcoming atmosphere. From the floor plan, it also appears as if most of the resources are directly accessible to students.

Another large SAC in Hong Kong is the Centre for Independent Learning at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The star page of the Centre is given in Figure 12. The Centre is similar to its counterpart at City University of Hong Kong, but places greater emphasis on incorporating the Internet into its facilities. This may reflect budgetary constraints as well as the close connection between theory and practice that is described clearly in the website. Outside of Europe, Hong Kong is one of the most active areas in the development of SACs, and supports a professional organization, the Hong Kong Association for Self-Access Learning and Development (HASALD), devoted to exchanging information on new developments in SACs.

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Figure 12. Start Page of the Centre for Independent Learning at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Universities in China have recently become the object of a major reform drive, known as the 211 Project,5 to put China on the world map in terms of research. At the same time, a large number of Chinese students have been going overseas, mostly to English-speaking countries, to obtain advanced degrees, resulting in growing interest in improving foreign language education at the undergraduate level. The start page of the website for the SAC at Tsinghua University is shown in Figure 13 below.

5 For more information on the 211 Project, see http://www.edu.cn/HomePage/english/education/highedu/211/index.shtml

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Figure

13. Start Page of Self-Access Language Learning Center at Tsinghua University The SAC is administered by the Department of Foreign Languages, but is open to all students at Tsinghua University. Among the SACs surveyed in this paper, it has the longest opening hours, from 8:00 to 22:00, seven days a week. The Center is also one of the most computer-based of the SACs surveyed in this paper. The main focus of the Center is on maintaining a website that has a number of links to English-language newspapers and magazines and a collection of VCD films and language learning software, all of which are used on a PC. Many other SACs that have developed since the spread of computers and the Internet are similarly computer-based, whereas SACs that have emerged from language laboratories typically include a variety of old and new materials for self-study and classroom use. The Horwood Language Centre at The University of Melbourne is an example of the relatively few SACs that focus on CALL development. As indicated in the start page shown in Figure 14, the Centre's primary interest lies in developing CALL and multimedia materials. The CALL laboratories give staff members and students in the University's graduate programs in CALL6, a chance to pilot new materials on students and to gain direct experience in managing materials in a SAC setting. The Centre rents its facilities to the University and private industry, which indicates that it is responsible for securing its own finances. The "Projects" link brings up a page that contains a list of extensive multimedia and CALL materials development and research projects.

6 At present, only The University of Melbourne (M.A. and Ph.D. degrees) and Carnegie Melon University (M.A. degree) have graduate programs leading to a degree in CALL.

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Figure 14. Start Page of the Horwood Language Centre at The University of Melbourne 4. SACs in Japan The development of SACs in Japanese universities has lagged behind other advanced countries, even though the language laboratory and other types of advanced educational technology are widespread. The reasons behind the slow development of SACs in Japan are complex, but the most likely explanation is that foreign languages are integrated deeply into the general education curriculum that has its origins in the pre-war upper high school. The curriculum of the pre-war upper high school viewed foreign languages as part of a well-rounded "cultural" education, or kyōyō in Japanese, that marked membership in the ruling elite, rather than a practical skill (Takeuchi, 2001). The merging of the upper high schools with universities in the postwar era placed this tradition at the center of foreign language education, thus negating the need for the development of institutions aimed at developing communicative proficiency in foreign languages.

The protracted economic slump and greater critical scrutiny of university education in the 1990s has created a sea change in attitudes toward foreign language education. Suddenly, universities are being pressed to shift the focus of foreign language education away from kyōyō and toward developing communicative language proficiency. Apart from the change in attitudes toward foreign language education, the reorganization of teaching units responsible for the general education curriculum in the mid-1990s stimulated the development

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of new teaching units devoted exclusively to foreign language teaching at a number of universities. These units often took over management of language laboratories, some of which evolved into SACs, while others were founded exclusively as SAC. The origin of many SACs in Japan in the language laboratory thus has much in common with the origin of SACs in the United States. This is hardly a surprise because the language laboratory spread rapidly in Japan as it had in the United States and retains much of its popularity today. An example of a SAC in Japan is the Multimedia Multilingual Space (MMLS) at the Keio Shonan Fujisawa Campus (Keio SFC). The MMLS is a room in the SFC Media Center that has several computers and offers access to audiovisual materials, satellite television, and foreign-language newspapers. Established in 1999, nine years after the SFC campus was built, this shows how the beginnings of a SAC can be carved out of an existing institution.

Another example of SAC is the Library at the Foreign Language Institute (FLI) at Kanazawa University. The start page of the website is given in Figure 15.

Figure 15. Start page (English) of the Foreign Language Institute, Kanazawa University Like nearly all institutions with the words "foreign language center," or a variation thereof in their title, the Institute is primarily a teaching unit composed of foreign language teachers and a small administrative staff. The FLI is one of relatively few SACs in Japan that offers self-access space for students. As noted on the website, "the FLI has a highly networked computer-assisted language learning (CALL) system, which is designed to encourage students to study foreign

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languages at any time they wish." The Japanese start page contains a link to the "Future Vision" (金沢大学外国語教育研究センター将来構想) that defines the future mission of the FLI as supporting foreign language education through undergraduate and graduate education. This marks a clear break from the kyōyō tradition that has de facto limited the focus of foreign language education to the first two years of undergraduate school. Finally, the "Practical English Club" (実用英語研究会) at Kagoshima University is an example of creative re-use of an underused and out-of-date language laboratory. Organized in 2001 by Higuchi Yoshimi, a graduate student under my supervision at the time, the club received permission professors in the English Department in the Faculty of Education to use the Department's language laboratory during times when the facility was not in use. Higuchi developed a wide range of cassette tapes and CD-ROM materials for self-study of vocabulary and organized the schedule so that the facility was open to students during convenient times, such as early evening and on weekends. Students could listen to the cassettes in the booths or the CD-ROM materials on notebook computers that they brought to the language laboratory. Like the SAC in the English Department of the University of Münster, the "Practical English Club" stands as an example of how student volunteers can create and manage a small SAC using existing university facilities. 5. Conclusion At the beginning of this paper, I asked a number of research questions. As a conclusion, I will offer tentative answer to each of the questions: How do SACs define their mission? With rare exceptions, SACs define their mission as a supportive one, but the locus of what is being supported differs. SACS that have emerged from recent research on learner autonomy tend to define themselves as supportive of learner needs and interests. These SACS usually offer a wide range of languages and services, such as language learning counseling, and sponsor research on foreign language education. By contrast, SACs that have emerged from language laboratories or language teaching units the SACs at Harvard University and Columbia University tend to define themselves as supportive of the teaching needs and interests of the university. They offer a more narrow range of languages and services and rarely sponsor research on foreign language education. Their main focus is on providing materials, both for classroom use and self-study, related to languages taught in the university. Many also offer facilities and technical assistance to help teachers develop

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multimedia materials. How are SACs organized and administered? Large learner-centered SACs, such as the Language Centre at the University of Cambridge tend to be autonomous units in the university, whereas as materials-centered SACs tend to be administered by another unit, such as a faculty or foreign language department, in the university. The difference is crucial because an autonomous unit in the university usually has its own funding and an administrative structure that gives it a larger voice in university affairs. SACs administered by a faculty or foreign language department have less budgetary and administrative independence and are heavily dependent for support on the quality of leadership in the parent organization. How are SACs funded, both at the establishment and operational phases? This question is difficult to answer from a virtual survey, but the type of administrative organization offers insight into this question as mentioned above. Nearly all SACs have their origins in a previously existing institution, such as a language laboratory, but autonomous SACs, such as the Language Centre at Cambridge University require a large amount of new funding, both at the establishment and operational phases, to achieve a high profile in the university. Such new funding may come from inside the university through reductions in expenses elsewhere or from external sources in the public and private sector. In either case, however, leadership in the university must launch a major drive to justify the contribution that the SAC can make to the university. The existence of an autonomous, high-profile SAC can thus be interpreted as a measure of the degree of importance that a university places on foreign language education. What role do SACs play in integrating new technologies into foreign language learning? As supporting institutions that must constantly justify their contribution to the university, SACs play a critical role in integrating new technology into foreign language learning and teaching. Some SACs, such as a the Horwood Language Centre at Melbourne University are serve as technological centers of CALL and WELL materials development. Others, such as the Centre for Independent Language Learning at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Self-Access Center at Tsinghua University, have developed WELL materials to reach a larger number of students. With the rapid spread of broadband technology, SACs in South Korea have also developed a number of WELL programs to reach out learners outside the university community.

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How is the effectiveness of SACs evaluated by students, teachers, and administrators? This question is also difficult to answer from a virtual survey, but autonomous, high-profile SACs are no doubt evaluated rigorously, particularly in the United Kingdom where all institutions, including the universities themselves, are under increasing pressure to justify their existence. Smaller SACs in Japan and the United States that have their origin in the language laboratory may not be subject to the type of rigorous evaluation that has become common in the United Kingdom. Changes in technology, student needs, and the competition for students in the United States, however, puts pressure on SACs to justify their role in the university. SACs that are connected to language teaching units may be evaluated as part of overall evaluation of the quality of teaching. Developing a fair and effective method of evaluating SACs is critical to clarifying institutional expectations of the SAC. How have SACs influenced traditional classroom-based foreign language teaching? This question is more speculative and thus difficult to answer. All SACs allow teachers to assign homework that involves contact with the language, but the limited number of spaces in even the largest SAC suggests that most teachers rarely do this. Instead, teachers who are interested in education technology rely more on e-mail and WELL materials because students can access these materials at home and in computers around the university. CALL materials occupy a middle ground, but copyright laws make it difficult to distribute materials to students, except for those that are produced by the instructor or by the SAC. The impact of SACs on classroom-based teaching needs further investigation to see how the existence of a SAC affects what goes on in the classroom. What is the future of SACs? Foreign language education is a trendy field, as old ideas are reheated and presented as the latest shortcut in the inherently complex and difficult process of learning a foreign language. The spread of SACs, particularly, in Europe, suggests that, like CALL and WELL, they are one of the latest trends in foreign language education. The growing interest in SACs, however, comes from a deeper need for a physical and spiritual locus for foreign language education in the university. As long as society believes that an important, if not the main, purpose of foreign language education in the university is to develop communicative proficiency in the language, then interest in SACs will remain high. For universities that revere learner autonomy as an academic tradition,

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the allure of a SAC thriving with language learning may prove irresistible, suggesting that, in Japan at least, we may be coming full circle "back" to the Edo period when learning was a hands-on, autonomous activity rich in self-study and mentorship (Tsujimoto, 1999). Perhaps, then, the distinction between kyōyō and skill in foreign language education will then become a historical debate.

Finally, a report from a workshop on developing SACs at the European Centre for Modern Language (1999, p. 7) dilated the characteristics of successful SACs as being: based on a teaching project worked out and agreed in advance, backed by

the institution, and implemented by an experienced and motivated team. given the necessary human resources (teachers, monitors, administrative

and technical staff), time to produce materials, premises and facilities. in tune with new technologies and able to cope with networking problems.

If correct, then this suggests that universities in Japan that want to develop a successful SAC must first develop a strong institutional consensus for and commitment to reform of foreign language education.

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European Centre for Modern Language (1999). "Language Resource Centres: Shifting from the Teacher’s Perspective to the Learner's Perspective" (Report Workshop no. 5/99). Graz, Austria, 2-6 November 1999. Retrieved February 20, 2003 from http://www.ecml.at/documents/reports/WS199905E.pdf.

Gardner, D. & Miller, L. (1999). Establishing Self-Access: From Theory to Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Karlsson, L., Kjisik, F. & Nordlund, J. (Eds.). (1997). From Here to Autonomy: A Helsinki University Language Centre Autonomous Learning Project. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.

Kelly, L. G. (1969). 25 Centuries of Language Teaching: An Inquiry into the

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Kim, I-S. & Chŏng, K-H. (2002). Mŏltimidiŏ ŏhak kyoyuk sentŏ kuch'uk ŭi iron kwa shilje [Building Multimedia Language Centers: Theory and Practice]. Seoul: Myna.

Little, D. (1991). Learner Autonomy. 1: Definitions, Issues and Problems. Dublin: Authentik.

Little, D. (1999). "Learner Autonomy is More than a Western Cultural Construct." In Cotterall, S. & D. Crabbe (Eds.) Learner Autonomy in Language Learning: Defining the Field and Effecting Change (pp. 11-88). Frankfurt am Main: Lang.

Stack, E. M. (1966). The Language Laboratory and Modern Language Teaching. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sturtridge, G. (1997). "Teaching and Learning in Self-Access Centres: Changing Roles?" In P. Benson & P. Voller (Eds.) Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning (pp. 66-78). Harlow, UK: Longman.

Takeuchi, Y. (2001). Taishō modanizumu no yūme no ato: hōkō suru "kyōyō" to daigaku [Relics of Dreams of Taishō-Period Modernism: Universities and Wandering "Cultural Enrichment"]. Tokyo: Shinyōsha.

Toyama, T. (1992). Sapporo Nogakkō to eigo kyōiku: Eigakushi kenkyū no shiten kara [Sapporo School of Agriculture and English Education as Seen from the Perspective of the History of English Language Studies]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppansha.

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Websites Bibliography on learner autonomy, Autonomy and Independence in

Language Learning site by Phil Benson, the English Centre, University of Hong Kong: http://ec.hku.hk/autonomy/bibliog.html

Carnegie Melon University (M.A. Program in CALL): http://ml.hss.cmu.edu/call/indexpc.html

Centre for Independent Language Learning, English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University: http://elc.polyu.edu.hk/CILL/

English Language Centre, City University of Hong Kong: http://www.cityu.edu.hk/elc/elc/index.html

European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education: http://www.cercles.org/

Foreign Language Institute, Kanazawa University: (Japanese site)

Self-Access Centers (SAC) in University-Level Foreign Language Education: Theoretical and Practical Considerations 69

http://fliwww.ge.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/ "History of CALL Web Exhibition" by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Caillau:

http://historyofcall.tay.ac.uk/index2.htm Hong Kong Association for Self-Access Learning and Development

(HASALD): http://lc.ust.hk/HASALD/ Horwood Language Centre, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne:

http://www.hlc.unimelb.edu.au/ Language Centre, University of Cambridge: http://www.langcen.cam.ac.uk/ Language Centre, University of Oxford: http://www.lang.ox.ac.uk/ The Language Resource Center, Columbia University:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lrc/ The Language Resource Center, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard

University: http://lrcnt.fas.harvard.edu/Home.html The University of Melbourne (M.A. and Ph.D. in CALL):

http://www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/courses/rags/handbook/disciplines/call/ Self-Access Centre, Department of English, University of Münster:

http://www.sac.uni-muenster.de/ Self-Access Language Learning Center, Department of Foreign Languages,

Tsinghua University: http://www.hlc.unimelb.edu.au/