Portuguese is taught as a major at six Japanese universities. Factors such as the lack of instructors make it difficult to treat European and Brazilian varieties of Portuguese equally. Nevertheless, both social changes and students’ diverse interests show that these two varieties should be treated as distinct subjects with the same importance. In addition, the distinction between written and spoken languages in Brazilian Portuguese is also important. Many characteristics of spoken language violate rules of normative grammar and for that reason sometimes they are not taught. This paper discusses the importance of awareness about the varieties in Portuguese language education.

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The purpose of this article is to examine the attempts of teachers who designed society-connected language teaching practices in Japanese, Chinese and Korean language education. In this research we 1. collected data from the MEYASU website and analysed the tendency of the practices, and 2. interviewed three teachers to understand the intentions of the practices.The interview data showed that the three teachers attemped to create a mutual collaborative society through language classes, making the most of every resource such as human resources, material resouces, and social resources.

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As an initiative of the government, tourism promotion and the environment for welcoming inbound tourists are being enhanced. The opportunities to communicate with tourists from Chinese speaking regions have also increased. On the other hand, there are a lot of senior learners of the Chinese language aspiring for communication with native speakers. However, they seldom have an opportunity to participate in collaborative activities. In general, senior learners play the role of the volunteer staff by providing one-sided support as Japanese language exchange partners or volunteer guides at tourism events. In this study, we aimed at the design, implementation and evaluation of intercultural and intergenerational cooperative learning between Chinese students and Japanese senior learners. The tasks were the planning of a University campus guide course and the development of VR contents. The reality of intergenerational interaction was analyzed by employing the Community Intergenerational Observation Scale for Elders and Children (Itoi, et al., 2015). At the same time, we explored the recognition of learning experiences and achievements with qualitative data analysis.

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This paper aims to indicate what is needed to promote more foreign language education other than English at Japanese high schools, based on past support projects conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). After investigating and analyzing the projects while taking into account the background of Japanese society, stable and more efficient measures for promoting language education were uncovered. The findings recommend making use of the strengths and characteristics of each organization concerned, that is, high schools, the prefectural and municipal boards of education, universities, and the MEXT. Specifically, the results indicate that it is important that the prefectural and municipal boards of education take a bigger role in the future to promote foreign language education.

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This study examined how the learners perceived the language use of the Japanese native speakers. As a result of this study, it was found that learners were aware of the diversity of the language use of native speakers through finding various examples of native speakers in analysis activities. In addition, it was found that the learners had adopted the opinions of native speakers while critically considering their opinions.

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This paper reports on the practices of the faculty development activities in Spanish language teaching. During the middle of the 1990s, a number of teachers and researchers of Spanish as a second or foreign language noticed various issues with the instruction of language and the necessity to create opportunities where educators could learn how to improve their teaching methods. Thus, two groups were founded: one based in Tokyo (2002) and the other in Osaka (2006). In this paper, the authors review the contributions of these groups since their foundation and reflect on the activities needed for the future.

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Small- and medium-sized local national universities must actively incorporate regional associations in language courses because of the limited learning time allotted for the acquisition of a second or foreign language. To overcome this problem, a video combining an audio track sung in French and a series of visuals introducing the corresponding region is created by each student group of French classes offered as a basic education subject at the University of Miyazaki. Subsequently, these videos are published on the YouTube website. This paper reports on such practical methods that may be applied to the learning of all languages.

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In Japan, there is a hesitation to use English amongst certain parts of the population. This hesitation is caused by the fear of making mistakes while speaking in public, and it tends to create further tension when speaking in English. In order to overcome these feelings of inadequacy, we conducted "multilingual activities" in university classes with the goal of learning multiple languages simultaneously. These multilingual activities do not follow the traditional learning methods that are based on the grasp of grammar, reading comprehension, and writing, but rather a listening method that focuses on listening and speaking. Participation is spontaneous rather than passive, with a focus on playing and group conversation. This paper covers the results of these activities.

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In November 2017, JACTFL and other organizations submitted petitions to Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education aimed at loosening up the eligibility requirements for teachers of Korean language in municipal high schools. This article reports how such attempts affected the employment by the Board and discuss what role JACTFL ought to play in guaranteeing opportunities for learning different languages in high schools.

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This paper reports on the practice and teacher’s role in a university classroom with an aim of promoting autonomous language learning. In this class, each of the students chooses his/her target language. They can try any language they have no experience of learning. As a result, more than 10 languages can be learnt in the same classroom at the same period. Inevitably, some of students’ choices do not match the teacher’s language repertoire. Therefore, in this class, the teacher doesn’t “teach” the target language itself. Instead, the teacher tries to promote students’ autonomy to learn their target language. More specifically, the teacher’s role can be defined by six major aspects: general instruction of the first steps of language learning, explaning about learning strategies, information sharing, providing a good learner model, providing chances to see plurilingual people, and relativizing difficulties that students encounter during their learning processes.

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The members of the JACTFL (Japan Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) executive board, President Mr. YAMAZAKI Y., Prof. USUYAMA T. and Mr. MOGI T. paid a visit to the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education on November 28, 2019 in order to appeal directly to the key person on decision-making process in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG). We made a request to keep supporting the multi-lingual education and the international exchange programs and to continue their financial funding after the Olympic Paralympic Games. Mr. UDA Takeshi, Special Advisor on Education of Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education of TMG, mentioned the importance of the multi-lingual education policy in school education (focused on English education) long before and articulated his intention to continue supporting it after Tokyo 2020 Games.

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