In this study we will present a new approach to the important field of phonetic education for beginners, featuring two native speakers acting role plays. The learner uses a device to record his own voice in order to control his pronunciation. First he tries to imitate the native speakers as closely as possible. He takes over a role and starts acting freely. By this process the learner is freed from the old gruesome pronunciation drill practice. We think that by interacting spontaneously with his Japanese partners he is able to acquire necessary pronunciation and communication skills in a more pleasant and motivating way.

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A questionnaire about grammar view was carried out among teachers of the Japanese language in China. From the view of the teachers, we can divide their opinion into 3 groups; 1) the positive classifying opinion to classify grammar in elementary, intermediate and advanced level, 2) the negative classifying opinion that the items of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test can affect the grammar classification from elementary to advanced level, and 3) the negative classifying opinion that there is no distinction. Some informants replied they do not feel a difference between elementary, intermediate and advanced grammar from the position of the student. The fact that Chinese native teachers of the Japanese language consider advanced grammar as "not for daily use" is an important key to redefine advanced grammar.

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This research investigates problems related to speech activities, focusing on an activity conducted at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). We considered what all participants assessed positively and negatively, and what effects learners' feedback brought about, using teachers' and guest listeners' evaluation sheets, learners' self-evaluation sheets and questionnaire surveys. We found that teachers' evaluation had a bias toward classroom activities and linguistic points of view, whereas guest listeners' evaluation offered more general view, taking also socio-cultural factors. On the other side, we pointed out that learners' awareness can lead to the development of learning activities.

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A Web-based role-play practice package for e-Learning has been developed. Conversations for the practice mainly handle request, order, or negotiation found in the business scenes. To give some interactivity to the inflexible role-play practice, each conversation has a question point where the learner is to decide on how the conversation goes on. Simple interview has been conducted to collect learners' evaluations on the interface design for this particular point. Most learners, both intermediate and advanced ones prefer learner-controlled design to automatic operation, though some advanced learners may regard automatic operation more challenging.

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The purpose of this research was to study the different attitude and preference between Japanese language teachers and foreign students in use of reading support e-learning system. In experiments, 20 language teachers and 20 foreign students used two different reading e-learning contents, on LMS Server (WebClass) and answered the 33-item questionnaires that investigate four factors (functions, relevance, aptitude, achievement, and motivation). The result revealed that foreign students showed positive attitude toward new tasks and explanation with graphics. They also approved ordinary language tasks (vocabulary and grammar). However, Japanese teachers indicated difficulty and adequacy of textual information in tasks and explanation in e-learning, even if they positively evaluated new language tasks.

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This study analyzes functions of interaction in 'mousiokuri ', oral relay reports at a medical center. The analysis focuses on whether there is interaction, and on this basis divides the data two text types. In this study the main stress falls on differences of functions and forms of the end of utterances between two text types. Analysis of the two text types shows that the discourse without interaction has a pattern in forms of the end of utterances and functions. In the discourse without interaction, people use them in the almost same rate.

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This study investigated how much Thai learners of Japanese know about and are conscious of Japanese accent when producing speech. Through the questionnaire and the follow-up interview, it was found that the Thai learners of Japanese can be categorized into three types: 1) Learners who know nothing about and are not conscious of the accent, 2) Learners who have some basic knowledge but are not conscious of the accent when producing speech, 3) Learners who have some basic knowledge and are conscious of the accent when producing speech, though the levels of their knowledge and consciousness are both not enough. There are different tendencies among these three types of learners in the way of producing the accent.

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Yoshinogawa International Exchange Association (YIA) is a community-based volunteer group that is committed to community development through cross-cultural communication. Based on the belief that there is something only the community-based volunteer group can do to foster mutual understanding through Japanese language and cultural education, YIA, in cooperation with the University of Tokushima, successfully managed the 10-day program welcoming 10 Japanese language students from Germany. Here, we would like to report on and share with you the meaning and practice of community-based Japanese language education, as well as the mechanism of university collaboration for that purpose.

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This study aims to investigate kanji knowledge in students coming from non-kanji backgrounds who are majoring in science and engineering. It also suggests a list of recommended kanji these students need to acquire. We analyzed Japanese senior high school physics textbooks which are used by the students before they enter university and prepared kanji quizzes based upon kanji they have already been exposed to. We found that students had a good understanding of the 300 kanji most frequently used in their textbooks, but they still do not have enough kanji knowledge of non-scientific kanji generally used in written language.

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In this paper, we aim to present the effective methods of displaying video learning materials to Japanese language learners. The experiment was performed to thirty foreign students and nine native Japanese, by showing them three different types of display that are combined with images and transcriptions. We assumed here that the synthetic configuration on displaying is the most effective way. The result of this experiment shows no significant difference in those three types. Hence we analyzed the reasons and some possible factors in the various points of views, such as learner's level, question's adequacy, and testing methodology.

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What is the best way to improve learners' intonation, accent and pronunciation, and to strengthen learning skills? How can we make their speech more natural and flowing? Focussing on Vietnamese learners of Japanese, we investigated the following three aspects of difficulties with Japanese pronunciation: 1) rhythm 2) single-syllable pronunciation, and 3) the delivery and intonation of utterances. This study reports on a three-month clinic which addressed these issues. Based on teacher observation and a student questionnaire, the study examines student awareness of pronunciation, continued practice, improvement in ability and overall effectiveness of practice.

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e-Learning has become a more important part of learning Japanese. We have developed a trial e-learning courseware package to assist System Engineers (SE) to learn Japanese, reflecting the urgent need in Japanese companies for overseas SEs who can communicate in Japanese. We collected the data of the real negotiation between SE and clients, analyzed it, and developed this courseware. Therefore, this courseware package is authentic and useful for SE to learn Japanese using their knowledge of computer skills as SE.

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In this research the following results were pointed out by analyzing the incorrect usage of the noun phrase seen in the Japanese composition database by the Mongolian native speaker with the translation. (1) There are many errors of adjective noun-phrase concerning the selection of the affix. (2) Complex noun phrases are few. And it was pointed out that those tendencies depended on the influence of the native language transfer and the vagueness of the classification of Japanese language.

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This paper suggests an effective teaching method for international students who are expected to improve their communication skills by themselves after a certain period of language study. The purposes of this method for learners are threefold: 1) to acquire verbal and nonverbal communication skills to exchange information correctly, 2) to understand a concept that there is a flow of a conversation, and 3) to gain an ability to analyze the flow of a conversation. We use two components consisting of the conversation flow, "DANWA-KOHSEI-YOHSO," "KYOWA-SOKUSHIN-YOHSO." Then, we introduce "a conversation quiz" as a way to practice this teaching method.

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This paper aims to develop an error tagging support system to construct the corpus for Japanese language learners. The system will enable even unskiIled people to put tags easily with various hints offered from the corpus. In order to construct the database, we categorized learners' errors according to the verb usages where we referred to the previous researches, such as Teramura, Ohso and Ichikawa. At the same time we collected the error examples from composition written by Japanese learners in order to enrich the data.

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Various activities, such as oral and poster presentations, provide Japanese learners with opportunities to interact with native speakers. Previous reports dealing with these interactions, however, have rot referred to the actual interactions at a question period, although those activities usually end with it as series. Focussing on the interactions, this paper examines: 1) if the native speakers adjust their talk or not, 2) new the rays of questioning affect the learners' understanding 3) how the questions are introduced shen topic are shifted and how effectively topic openings "maeoki" function. The authors found that the time of topic shifting, especially without "maeoki" can be a critical monent that leads to a failure to understand.

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This report is about learning activities by utilizing the daily NHK television commentary "Siten-Ronten", where specialists discuss current problems in an easy to understand manner. The teacher rearranged the text concentrating on two goals: 1) to understand the topics 2) to learn different Japanese speech styles. Finally the learners chose topics, which they discussed in writing, expressing themselves strongly and freely. These compositions were shown to Japanese helpers, who gave written comments. We try to show what role the teacher could play and what can be achieved by incorporating native speakers and foreign learners in a mutual projectwork.

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The number of foreign residents in Japan has been increasing nationwide. In Tokushima prefecture, too. This number has been increasing. More than 6000 foreign residents from over 60 nationalities live in Tokushima as of December 31, 2004. Along with increasing number of foreign residents in Tokushima, demand for Japanese classes has also been rising. However, the budget for the Japanese classes has decreased year by year due to a tight Prefectural budget. Because of this situation, the Tokushima Prefectural International Exchange Association (TOPIA) will open one volunteer class by non paid Japanese teachers in addition to existing classes. Furthermore, TOPIA will eventually change existing Japanese classes to volunteer classes, as well. To prepare for this, TOPIA has had cultivation classes on how to teach Japanese to foreign people for those who would like to support foreign people in Japanese.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify what the feedback session of Japanese teaching practice should be like. After watching the video of a student teacher's class, teacher trainees gave comments instead of a supervisor. The results show that the comments by the teacher trainees aren't so different from that by a supervisor. Thus, the feedback session should be reexamined.

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