Bulletin of Japanese Language Teaching Practices

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This paper examines interaction patterns which encourage learner utterances and others which do not encourage them, based on classroom data from the Spring Semester Overseas Teaching Practicum, Academic Year 2012, held at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. The interaction patterns have been categorized into three types. The first type includes cases in which an interaction did not develop due to the author's failure to conduct an appropriate follow-up in the IRF pattern. The second type includes cases in which opportunities to develop an interaction were lost as the author had failed to take advantage of a learner initiation. The third pattern includes those in which opportunities for an utterance were lost because the author did not appoint a specific learner as the next speaker. As a result of the analyses, an improvement measure has been proposed for the first pattern in which the author should conduct interactions which emphasize the contents of the utterances more than grammatical accuracy, taking into consideration learner needs as well as the course objectives. The improvement measure proposed for the second pattern is to limit the amount of speech by the author, thereby giving more turns to talk to the interlocutors. For the third pattern an improvement measure has been suggested in which the author should increase opportunities for learner utterances by appointing individual learners as subsequent speakers, while considering a shared topic by learners an effective medium for developing an interaction.

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While specializing in Japanese language teaching practices at graduate school in Akita International University, I took part in teaching practice sessions over the course of three semesters. Even though I am a non-native speaker of Japanese, the teaching practice consisted of the same training and coursework as for native speakers. My grammar and pronunciation mistakes were often pointed out and, at times, my confidence toward teaching was low. On the other hand, my confidence in my teaching skills rose after receiving students' appreciative words during an overseas teaching practice, due to the fact that I used the Chinese language effectively to help Chinese-speaking students better understand the material. The advantage of non-native Japanese-speaking teachers was noticed from this particular teaching practice. This article discusses the advantages held by non-native Japanese student teachers. In this article, the advantages of non-native Japanese student teachers are examined through a self-assessment and the need for non-native Japanese-language teacher-training is mentioned.

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