In this presentation, we will introduce speaking activities at the lower intermediate level in a new textbook we are currently developing. The speaking activities were developed with the following two points in mind: 1) capacity building in stages for learning paragraph-level speech which is necessary for fostering academic Japanese, 2) stimulating students' autonomous learning through speaking activities.

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It's not so easy for the international students who study at a university where is giving lectures by using a foreign language. To improve the listening skill, especially to understand Japanese lecture, I have designed a series of listening practices by using OCW. I recommend that OCW is one of the best materials for improving the listening abilities because it has reality and variety in the contents. The students who had taken this course are quite satisfied with this teaching material. In addition, the students of lower levels may need some more help to understand it well.

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The aim of this study is to analyze how Chinese learners of Japanese state their opinions when negotiating. The expressions used by learners in scenarios where they negotiated in their native language and in Japanese were compared. Results show that learners tend to persuade their listeners in a strong way in Chinese. However, they avoid employing such characteristic when speaking in Japanese and they try to avoid conflict by adjusting and adapting Japanese speech acts like being considerate and stating the drawbacks of their position. This study reports on the characteristics observed, and further discusses pedagogical implications based on the findings.

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At Ehime University a full-time teaching staff is in charge of the management and coordination of Japanese Business education as part of the Shikoku Consortium of the Career Development Program for Foreign Students from Asia offered by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In this report, the merits and demerits of using a full-time teaching staff and the adjustment made accordingly will be discussed. The following problems and our response to them will be described, 1) the inconvenience of holding classes on weekdays, 2) the foreign students' attitude towards the classes and 3) the necessity of integrating Japanese business language education with Japanese business education.

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Nowadays mobile phone e-mail is being regarded as an important means of communication in Japan. The convenience and mobility aspects of e-mail make mobile phone e-mail very popular not only among Japanese but also the foreigners who live in this country. However, unfortunately it's not used enough as a communication tool in Japanese. Mobile phone e-mail has some unique characteristics such as written Japanese expressed by spoken Japanese and a great communication tool that can be used by close friends and family members. According to these characteristics, we developed a textbook for the people who want to exchange mobile phone e-mail with others in Japanese and learn fun and informal Japanese.

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This study examines the ways advisers respond to a learner's writing by email and the reasons they give this feedback. Five advisers, who have experiences in writing feedback electronically, experimentally gave feedback to the same learner's writing. There are three responding patterns, pointing out errors with colors and symbols, using a comment function of Microsoft WORD and rewriting whole sentences. They used both explicit and implicit feedback. When choosing feedback, advisers are considering educational effects, writer's aim, complexities of correction and time expenses. Each adviser is making decisions following own guidelines for responding which are based on their own beliefs.

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In order to multilingualize the Dictionary Tool, an Internet-based authoring system for the dictionary was developed, accessible to editors world-wide. This system contains a comment board where editors can post questions, comments, and information regarding the dictionary entries. This paper reports on the analysis of 629 comments posted by editors from May 2005 to December 2007. The results point to the need to take into consideration the following areas when creating example sentences: 1) the meaning of sentences needs to be transparent to a wide range of learners with different cultural backgrounds, 2) examples should show usage of different parts of speech, i.e. suru-verbs and -na adjectives, and 3) suffix rules should be indicated. There is also a need to explain collocations and idiomatic phrases. These standards are presently being used in the dictionary.

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When writing reports and research papers, non-native learners of Japanese often experience difficulty in making proper choices of words to fit the context and stylistic levels of the passage. In this study, we summarize results of questionnaire and interviews survey conducted in August through November of 2006. 40 learners of Japanese with different native languages responded to the questionnaire and interview, detailing their experiences on the proper choice of Japanese adverbs to be used in reports and research papers.

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This report focuses on the English-Japanese translation class using manga, novels and an English anime script for intermediate students of Japanese. These intermediate students are known to be able to write their thesis in formal-style, but have many difficulties in writing with spoken-style and onomatopoeia. In this class, the learners collaborate with classmates to translate and consequently monitor their own Japanese to acquire new vocabularies and expressions from others. Moreover, the collaborative activities motivate the students to study more and help build confidence in their abilities.

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We cannot assume that the concept of "politeness" is fully equivalent to that of the corresponding terms in other languages. The focus of this study is to compare the concept of "teineina", used by native speakers of Japanese, with the concept of the corresponding Spanish term "cortes". This paper reports on the diversity of these two concepts based on the result of a questionnaire, with reference to the framework developed by Ide et al. (1992).

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The purpose of this paper is to show how Dazai's Hashire Merosu was used as a reading text in a Japanese language class and how the students responded to the text. My intention to use the novel was: 1) to pay close attention to the details as well as the structure of the text, 2) to examine how the narrative voice changes, 3) to get a sense of stylistics, and 4) to elicit students' responses by encouraging them to comment freely on the text.

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Intermediate-Advanced Japanese learners can process shapes and sounds of individual kanji, and can read simple sentences without attention resources. Beyond this, they need to process kanji "deeply" in real contexts to utilize their kanji knowledge. Various reading materials for kanji learning exist, but they do not give sufficient consideration to these requirements. This paper discusses what is needed in reading materials for kanji based on cognitive learning science and on the author's practice. Topic, style, and activities of the materials should promote the elaboration of learners' knowledge.

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This paper reports on a joint lesson between foreign students (joint classes of three faculties) and Japanese students (the Faculty of Law). Along with the concern of both foreign and Japanese students, "Solving Housing Problems" was given as a subject. An activity which deepens the understanding of the position of each other through role-playing was performed. Consequently, a new side of each group's social culture became evident. This became the motivation for promoting study and to understanding each other further.

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This is an overview of the basic science materials that our institution is currently developing. To create this material, 1) we conducted a study of the words that appear in the current textbook; 2) we utilized written student feedback and student interviews; 3) we analyzed the classroom interactions. The content of the material we created was constructed in a manner that the language used for performing basic experiments and essential measurements was conveyed in vocabulary and phrases accessible to the level of students in the latter half of the beginning Japanese course, in order that these students could begin to acquire the fundamentals of science.

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Anime and manga, popular aspects of Japanese subculture, serve as strong motivators of learning Japanese. In the intermediate language class, various lessons incorporating these two areas were designed for the students. The purpose of these lessons was to develop each student's speaking ability by taking advantage of their interests and using this as a theme for the final objective which were the individual presentations. Activities included: discussions with native Japanese speakers, linguistic learning of colloquial expressions and onomatopoeia through interpretation of manga, etc. According to the questionnaire, these activities were deemed popular and prompted interest in the students on learning Japanese.

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Among advanced Japanese learners, even those who have passed the highest level (Level 1) of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) and understood the meaning of all the vocabulary found in it, it is rare for them to use this vocabulary in their conversations and compositions. This means that there is not an automatic transition from understanding what a word means to producing that vocabulary on their own. Therefore, we designed a task to help advanced students search for such words on their mental lexicon more naturally. In this task, the teacher chose a scene from a drama for the students to watch, and they were then asked to describe the situation and feelings of the character in the scene. This allowed the teacher to give the students a chance to "push" the use of their vocabulary.

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4^<th> year students of Japanese at the University of Ljubljana practice translating from their mother tongue Slovene into Japanese. To overcome their tendency to passively expect "correct" translations from their teacher, an electronic bullettin board system was introduced where students publish their translations and other students comment on them. Students were found to comment more freely and exhaustively within the bulletin board system than in regular classes, thus showing that communication through a bulletin board can effectively contribute to raising student autonomy and awareness of translation problems.

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It is said that the second language anxiety interrupts the acquisition of second language. Although previous studies have implicated that conversation with native speakers may help reduce the anxiety, there are only a few researches which have demonstrated such effect. This study examined whether frequency of the conversation with native speakers and the number of conversational situations influenced one's language anxiety. As a result, conversation with native speakers reduced both in-class and out-of-class language anxieties. On the other hand, the number of conversational situations did not show such effect.

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Debate is regarded as an effective way to cultivate logical and critical thinking in the education of academic Japanese. However, practicing debate is not easy for learners of Japanese because it requires both Japanese language ability and logical thinking ability. This paper reports and seeks solutions to problems observed in a debating contest for learners of Japanese at upper intermediate level. The main problems were as follows: 1) inconsistencies between the questions and answers, 2) wrong arguments due to lack of general knowledge, 3) remarks that digressed from the subject.

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We suggest a learning program to overcome the problem that foreign language learners face, especially the difference of a sense of language and the cultural background. We made original cards based on the twelve horary signs used for a long time in East Asia, and taught in elementary and junior high schools. The original cards consist of four kinds of cards and students can learn not only a letter and a sound but also culture. Statistics show that the understanding of many learners improved. We also suggest the method of the communication with these cards.

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This study aims to highlight the differences in approaching conversations using native language (Chinese) and non-native language (Japanese) in the situation of first meetings. Conversations were compared from the viewpoints of questions, responses and voluntary provision of information. The result showed that in the case of speaking in a non-native language, a person tends to ask fewer questions of the other person and provides less additional information than in the case of speaking in one's own native language.

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The current study examined how native-speaking teachers of Japanese modify their listening behavior when they interact with learners. Teachers' aizuchi directed toward native speakers and advanced-level learners were compared with respect to frequency and discourse functions. It was found that there were no clear differences in frequency but teachers tended to produce no response in an attempt to understand learners' utterances.

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Chinese learners of Japanese often call the names of Japanese speakers without honorifics (yobisute) when they introduce each other. This presentation aims to reveal the causes of their yobisute based on the analysis of conversations. The study has found that this type of yobisute occurs because of: 1) paying less attention to the politeness when they try to catch the unfamiliar names, and 2) first-language interference. Therefore, it is suggested that students should be taught how to ask the name again as well as the different use of yobisute between Japanese and Chinese.

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International students in scientific disciplines may exhibit problems in taking JSL courses, such as i) student's limited exposure to the Japanese language on campus, ii) non-cooperative attitude from the departments for language learning, iii) special class materials for science students, and ix) student's theory-oriented learning style, and so on. In this study, qualitative assessment method based on our course documents and instructors' class notes is presented, and it is shown that the course architecture, such as numbers of class session per week, textbooks, and class materials could affect the results of course evaluation. Both external and internal factors are considered.

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It is widely recognized that during reading text, we use eye fixation for getting information, and use saccade for searching information. In this paper, we try to detect the difference in reading processes between Japanese native speakers and Non-Japanese people by using eye-camera. As the result, it is found that saccade time is not depending on the difficulty of texts, but on each subjects group.

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In Japanese classes, the activities such as speeches, oral or poster presentations have been carried out. As for the assessment of those activities, however, the Japanese skills have been mainly focused on, but not the content itself. The content should be assessed, since the content is the main point of the ordinary presentations. The authors suggest that the content can be assessed, based on the interactions of the question period after presentations.

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This article discusses the effects of collaborative learning and the interactions between students and a teacher in class of the interview project, focusing on some student's process in completing his interview sheet. Through the interactions, he got other students' advices, or accepted some opinions that made his points of issues clearer, and he could completed his self-revised sheet. He also got chances to make conversations in Japanese and learned to carry out his communication with other members in class smoothly that lead to manage the interview work itself successfully.

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In evaluating papers assigned in class, instructors evaluate not only the accuracy of grammar and students' skill in written expression but also their content. In Japanese writing class, however, the content of some student compositions end up puzzling instructors. Content, of course, should be a factor in evaluation and instructors should emphasize its importance. To develop student awareness of written content, the author had students evaluate compositions from a grader's viewpoint. The results show that some students became conscious of increasing the reader's interest and its consequences for evaluation.

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The purpose of this study is to check whether "shadowing" can be used as an evaluation method of conversational proficiency. Placement tests in JSL generally check learners' grammar abilities, whereas their conversational proficiency is hardly considered. Moreover, it is not clear which methods can evaluate conversational proficiency. In this presentation, based on investigation of whether grammar abilities affect "shadowing" and whether there are any tendencies for incorrect reproduction, it is shown that "shadowing" can differentiate learners above certain grammatical level. It is also argued that "shadowing" can measure the variety of learners' expressions.

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