There are many studies about Kanji education but few studies about the role of Kanji classes. Traditional Kanji classes have the tacit assumptions that the role of Kanji class is giving declarative knowledge of Kanji. And it is left to learners how knowledge link up with practise. Traditional Kanji classes are insufficient for the students who come from non-Kanji areas and have little time to study. This study aims are to discuss the role of Kanji class and to propose using dictionary from the beginning.

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At intermediate level, Kanji users tend to retain some errors in reading Kanji; in particular, distinction between voiceless and voiced consonants, long and short vowels, double consonants, etc. To establish more effective instruction, the author examines Kanji which have more than two ON readings. In this paper five Kanji, "KA(for KAKOU) / GE(for JOUGE)", "KAKU(for KEIKAKU) / GA(for EIGA)", "KYOU(for BENKYOU) / GOU(for GOUJOU)", "CHI(for CHIKYUU) / JI(for JIMEN)" and "CHOU(for KICHOU) / JUU(for JUUYOU)", which have two voice-less-voiced pairs of ON readings, are taken up particularly for discussion.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the problems in their Kanji study which the learners' have in their mind now. In the Japanese language course schedules, especially in Kanji study Kanji, teachers are often very busy focusing on learners' language learning in the future, but forget to mind so much of the present state of the learners. As the result, learners give up their Kanji study before they reach to a certain level. As Kanji study are going to weigh much in advance level, if teachers could grasp the appropriateness of the course as a whole now, it will help the learners in the true meaning in the future.

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In daily Japanese classes, teachers often encounter unnatural expressions which have no grammatical errors, but are never used by native speakers. Why do the students compose such unnatural sentences? Where are they derived from? Based on the result of our survey conducted toward 172 Japanese learners in the form of questionnaires (the same format done by Hideo Teramura cf. NIHONGOGAKU vol.6, 1987), we tried to analyze this problem focusing on their viewpoint. Native speakers can guess what kind of expressions should follow after reading or hearing just a beginning part of a sentence. However, Japanese learners often conclude a sentence without restrictions. That results in their unnatural expressions which sound strange to native speakers. The goal of our study is to create a game or play that help Japanese learners develop their guessing ability on the assumption that reinforcement of this ability brings improvement of Japanese. As a first step to out goal, the questionnaires were done in order to see to what extent Japanese learners can expect appropriate expressions and to make clear the difference in the ability of expectation between native speakers and them. In our presentation, we show several types of unnatural expressions and analyze them.

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There are two ways of saying "Thank you' in Japanese: arigatou gozaimasu and arigatou gozaimashita. The difference between them is not in the level of politeness. Nor does it concern whether the speaker is grateful at the time of speaking, or was grateful in the past. The difference is that, by using the past tense form arigatougozaimashita, The speaker indicates that he/she intends to or wants to discontinue what has been going on. There are similar pairs of expressions in which the past tense form and the non-past tense form demonstrate a parallel pragmatic difference. Such pairs abound in expressions for greetings, and for questions and answers. It is important to pay careful attention to the pragmatic effect of this tense shift when teaching Japanese.

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The result of our research of noun modifier clauses used by Japanese native speakers tells that 'SOTO NO KANKEI' (2) quite often appears as well as 'UCHI NO KANKEI'(1) both in spoken Japanese and written Japanese. According to this, we tried a teaching method that presents 'UCHI NO KANKEI' and 'SOTO NO KANKEI' at the same time to elementary level students. (1) The target of the adnominalization is extracted from the adnominalized sentence itself. (2) The target of the adnominalization comes from outside the adnominalized sentence.

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With an aim of searching problems and effective teaching, two surveys were conducted: (1) Comparison between Japanese and students of Japanese on how connective particles are used in given four pairs of sentences. (2) What the students of Japanese keep in mind when they use NONI, TEMO, KEREDO010), and TATTE. The major findings were: I) Most frequently used connective particles in both groups were KEREDO(MO), NONI, TEMO. GA. 2) here was little difference between the two groups in the usage of KEREDO(MO) but 3) there was a remarkable difference in the usage of TEMO, i.e. there were far more students than Japanese who used TEMO for the same sentences. 4) About half of the students know the nuance of NONI, but there was none who referred to NONI's restraints in sentence endings. 5) There were many students who did not know TATTE. With these findings in mind, this paper proposes that diversified expressions should be taught depending upon nuances and sentence endings at an earlier stage before students get into a habit of using only sage but banal expressions.

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I observed and analyzed problems that native Japanese speakers (hereinafter referred to as learners) have when listening to lectures in Japanese. The results were as follows: The learners were unable to segment the words and phrases while they were attempting to grasp the meaning of the sentences, and also they could not understand the meaning of the wards and phrases. These problems comprised about 80% of the learner's difficulties. Among native speakers, however, about 23% of the problems were the same. For native speakers, the inability to understand the relation between the words and phrases in the process of analyzing the meaning of the sentences accounted for about half of their difficulties. In my study, I found out that in the process of listening to lectures, both native speakers and learners of Japanese as a second language can experience the same problems.

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This paper discusses the development of a Simple Performance Oriented Test (SPOT). Subject were asked to listen to a tape and fill in the blanks on an answer sheet, each with a single hiragana character representing a grammatical item. In order to examine the listening factor by tape, the subjects did the same test without a tape. As a result, among the upper scoring group (25%) tape version scored slightly higher, though no significant difference could be seen between the two. Among the lower scoring group (25%), on the other hand, non-tape version scored higher and a significant difference could be seen. The findings of this study indicate that the tape supplies the correct answer to the upper group; however, for the lower group, who cannot listen and process at natural speed, the tape forces students to work at a speed above their ability.

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In this research, we employed "Prosody Table" pursuing more effective pronunciation training. This "Prosody Table" is based on the F0 contour obtained from a native speaker of Tokyo dialect. By using this prosody table, a learner can easily grasp the prosodic features of Japanese language, such as accent, intonation, rhythm, and vowel devoicing etc.. We trained 6 Korean students who learn Japanese language in Tohoku University using this "Prosody Table". After the course, we measure the development. Comparing this result with those of 6 other students learned under a conventional method, it is certain that our new approach is much more effective than the conventional one.

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For revising the Japanese Language Aptitude Test, we collected and analyzed data in order to get information on the structure of listening aptitude. Examining items difficulty index and items discrimination index, correlations, and factor analysis, we found that listening aptitude has not a single dimension, but various features. We also included consideration data of advanced- level learners and Japanese native speakers for comparative purposes.

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At The Education Center for International Students, Nagoya University we have taught Japanese by centering around a phonetic rhythm education method during a six-month intensive language course. We tested the students' perception ability and the formation of rhythm in Japanese. After testing we compared the results of those who knew the rhythm method with the results of other students. Our findings were as follows: In the former group, the ability to form the rhythm of words they had already learned was better, when they saw the rhythm patterns printed on cards. And they could adopt the method to form the rhythm of new words. There was a little correlation between the perception ability and the formation ability.

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This study is designed to investigate the effect of speech training program by using social skill training on student's communicative competence. The purpose of this study is to investigate the following two points: 1) Speech training facilitates students' acquisition of grammatical knowledge. 2) Speech training facilities students' language skills for communication. 30 university students who were all intermediate level, were engaged in speech training program for 30 minutes for 5 days. Then, multiple-choice type test and role-playing type test were used to evaluate the effect of training. As a result, it is founded that students' knowledge and skills were clearly improved. Analysis of 2), however, suggested that training was not effective in resolving problems with pronunciation.

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The purpose of this article is to present a newly developed Japanese language program which aims at enhancing cross-cultural understandings. Thirty female students from Gyousei Women's College in Korea took part in the three-week Japanese language program at Aichi Shukutoku University. The major objectives of this program are to provide both the Korean and Japanese students with an opportunities where (1) an understanding of different cultural values and worldviews between Japan and Korea is increased through discussing various daily issues in Japanese ; and (2) an attitude is cultivated to look at their own culture from an alternative viewpoint by increasing interests in each other's culture, which ultimately leads to a growth in the ability to look at other cultures from a cross-cultural viewpoints.

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As part of the program of the Half-year Japanese Intensive Course of Nagoya University, we introduced a project entitled "Visiting Ones' Academic Advisor." The project was carried out during the terms beginning in October 1993 and April 1994. The object of the program was in a non-classroom atmosphere, and at the same time, to enable the student to get more information about the university he or she plans to attend. First, the student telephoned his or her advisor and made an appointment. Then he or she met the advisor and asked for information about the university. The positive results of the program were as follows. 1) The students realized they could communicate and get necessary information by the strategy of listening to and speaking Japanese. 2) They were able to use what they studied in the classroom in actual situations. 3) They were able to appreciate the importance of what they studied. 4) They were able to get more information about their university. On the other hand, the negative side as follows : 1) All students were not able to participate the program. 2) Students could not express themselves fully in Japanese in a given situation.

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A Japanese language classroom often has people from different cultural backgrounds. How does the cross-cultural environment affect one's cognition? As a first step to answer this question, authors discuss cognitive modification of both learners of Japanese and the trainee Japanese teachers on their thoughts of how classes should be run. A case study is conducted at the Japanese language program held at Tohoku University for second year students from Chonbuk National University, Korea. The Personal Attitude Construct Analysis (PAC) method has been employed and has proven its ability to extract deep qualitative data from the subjects.

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This paper outlines the results of a survey conducted into the dictionary usage of Japanese language learners, and is part of a research project being undertaken into gender representation in such dictionaries. 172 students enrolled at 6 Japanese universities comprised the survey sample. Survey results indicate that patterns of dictionary usage alter with both the users language level and L1 status. Similarly, that L1 speakers of languages other than English, Chinese or Korean show tendencies to use L3 (i.e. non-L1) → Japanese dictionaries. Some learners expressed as a reason for this the lack of adequate L1 → Japanese materials available for their L1 language group. A significant number of respondents recorded electronic dictionaries as those which they used most often thus indicating a slight move towards usage of dictionaries in that genre. Overall the results from this survey suggest the need for the development of dictionaries that will adequately cater for non-English/Chinese/Korean L1 learners of Japanese. It also points to the need for the further development of Japanese → Japanese learners dictionaries and dictionaries in the electronic genre.

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It is difficult to learn Japanese, especially Kanji for foreign students. The problem for them are as follows; (1) They must take an intensive course in a short time to learn basic Kanji. (2) Their patterns of learning Kanji are different from Japanese. Japanese usually learn Kanji by writing. On the other hand, foreigners often like visual presentation. We designed visual user-interface of Kanji learning support system using Hyper Media technologies. We intended foreign students to use our system when they want to review the lesson by themselves after school with following the curriculum guidelines of textbooks as if they take the lesson again.

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It is often considered almost impossible to define and convey intrinsic meanings of words which imply characteristic Japanese ideas. But this is possible if you use certain methods which appeal to the five senses, making clear the dynamic elements of these meanings. You can put it into practice also in normal classroom activity but you can achieve considerably more effect using computers which coordinate better the various dynamic elements, such as voice, colors, graphics, simulation and so on. An example of computer assisted teaching material will be demonstrated which is supposed to help learners to grasp intuitively the intrinsic meaning of the verbs, "ageru" and "kureru".

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In foreign language learning, especially at a beginning level there is often a tendency for the teacher to over-emphasize the importance of 'speaking' as against 'listening'. This may produce excess stress in the student which could have harmful effects in both listening and speaking. Therefore I will examine the problems of both teaching and learning of listening comprehension, with the application of CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) as one possible way of helping to understand there problems better. I will present the contents of a software program based on the Macintosh Hypercard system that suggests a method of improving basic listening comprehension. By using sounds and graphics to create meaningfulness in order to develop listening comprehension ability and also an understanding of the grammatical structure. This prototype deals with the Japanese language 'giving' and 'receiving' verbs in their various forms as used in everyday situations.

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