The six case studies revealed that the participants were not special learners
who were destined to consistently possess high levels of learning motivation and
become highly proficient in English. Rather, at the onset of their English study,
they were indistinguishable from many Japanese students found in English
classrooms across Japan: They were from middle class families, their parents were
not proficient in English, and they did not visit or live in an English-speaking
country in their childhood. Most of them began studying English as a school
subject at age 13 in a Japanese junior high school, and they studied to pass entrance
examinations in their final years in junior high school and high school.