ABSTRACT
In this chapter an account of how eikaiwa lessons were produced is given. The chapter addresses how the status of eikaiwa as a commercial provider of language education (i.e. one that exists to make a profit) affects the manner in which language is taught. The chapter draws on a notion of Taylorised and flexible forms of production as a dialectical unity of two mutually occurring forms of production, each of which embodies certain tendencies and interests that pull eikaiwa teachers in potentially contradictory directions in the production of the lesson. On the one hand, the use of prescribed scripted plans, teaching materials, and methods, are all ensured by evaluative observations of teachers’ lessons as a means to guarantee a standardised level of quality of lessons, as commodities of a homogeneous quality or use-value. Running contrary to this however, the manner in which students related to their teachers as ‘customers’ or ‘clients’ necessitated that students were not only to be taught, but also to be ‘satisfied’. Delivering such satisfaction called for the bespoke flexible production of lessons which catered to the demands of individual students, and thus pulled the production of the lesson commodity towards a heterogeneity of use-value production.
