The Development of Japanese Language Education Materials Focusing on Recording Minutes in Business Settings

Abstract

This research aims at developing audio materials for Japanese education focused on recording minutes in business settings. We taught international graduate and undergraduate students using these materials and conducted a survey to examine the difficulty of tasks of the materials. This revealed that 1) the speed of the conversation is fast; 2) it is difficult to recognize and write down unknown words and katakana words; 3) it is challenging to write down the keywords while listening to the conversation. These suggest that we need to consider the target learners and the vocabulary used and devise effective tasks to foster learners’ abilities to record minutes.