ABSTRACT
This chapter will discuss the narratives mass media produce which result in supporting the policies. After a brief diachronic review of several major changes in ELT policies in Japan over the past years, I will particular focus on how the narratives are constructed by the mass media and subsequently affect the formation of learners’ beliefs about learning English. I will then discuss recent cases from Japanese newspaper articles on the proposal of using commercial standardized tests as a part of university entrance exams, and their possible influences on those readers who may not necessarily have enough backgrounds information to fully evaluate the validity of standardized tests as a supporting evidence. From the analysis of the newspaper article, it was found, as Shohamy [1] suggests, that these standardized tests were powerful enough to demonstrate that policy makers have “serious and meaningful attitude towards education”. What language teaching professionals can do is to take more active roles to promote appropriate use of these tests to the general public, by providing them with the optimal use of these standardized tests so that its benefit to the learners be maximized.
