Developing a Teaching Method for Beginners That Utilizes Their Environment as a Major Learning Resource to Promote Their Active Participation in a Research Community

Abstract

In order to develop a teaching method to help graduate-level international students and researchers who have come to Japan with little or no knowledge of Japanese, but who can devote only a limited amount of time to receiving formal instruction, we designed learning materials and activities for use in a short-term introductory course. The focus was on developing learnersʼ skills to make use of their own environment, where they are daily exposed to real spoken communication, as a learning resource; they were encouraged to observe and catch expressions used in their laboratory in order to share them in class, so that they should gradually become aware of their own ability to learn the language by themselves and become sufficiently motivated to continue learning throughout their stay. Learnersʼ evaluation at the completion of the course showed that both the materials and activities were greatly welcomed by the participants, who were eager to join in the laboratoryʼs predominately Japanese community; they reported frequently using acquired expressions to initiate interactions as well as actively making observations.