In order to promote teacher autonomy, it is necessary for teachers to critically reflect on themselves from a third-party perspective. Therefore, this paper presents an overview of a reflective activity using the Trajectory Equifinality Approach (TEA) conducted with a Chinese teacher of Japanese language, and its effects. As a result of the practice, the participant was able to understand the importance of critical reflection and also to metacognize their own growth, which indicates that the use of TEA enables meaningful reflection.

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We conducted an online cultural experience tour in the Business Japanese course. Through the interaction with the local residents, we aimed to create an interactive class practice where the students could not only learn about Japanese culture and industry, but also look at the difficulties the local residents are facing and gain some insights. This paper is an attempt to report on the practice of the two online cultural experience tours, to examine what kind of insights both sides were able to gain, and to improve the classes in the future.

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In the present study, we investigated the relationship between understanding the meaning of Japanese vocabulary and visual-spatial intelligence. Iranian Japanese learners, who attended this study, took three tests. The tests were included a visual-spatial intelligence test, which was adapted from McKenzie's Multiple Intelligences Inventory, and two other Japanese vocabulary tests. A Spearman's correlation revealed a statistically significant positive correlation between Japanese learners' visual-spatial intelligence and the ability to guess the meaning of Japanese vocabularies. The finding of this study leads Japanese language educators and learners to some clues to teach and learn Japanese vocabulary effectively.

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Modal adverbs represent a certain psychological attitude of the speaker, and their position in the sentence is relatively free. When they are located at the beginning and end of the sentence, they have more prominent pragmatic functions because they are connected with the listener's turn .By means of corpus analysis, this paper analyzes the pragmatic functions of modal adverbs at the beginning and end of sentences.

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In some cases, soo da ‘it appears’ can be used with nouns, as in ii hito soo da ‘appear to be a nice person.’ While it tends to be used with nouns that express human characteristics, on Twitter it’s also used with other types of nouns, as in ii kuruma soo da ‘appear to be a good car.’ This paper discusses what factors are involved behind that tendency and such use of soo da on Twitter in terms of its pragmatic constraint.

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This paper reports on: (1) the need for developing the KANJI learning video for beginners, (2) the questionnaire survey results of the pilot video, (3) the contents and the characteristics of the video, (4) the things that are needed to add or improve later. This paper highlights the effectiveness of KANJI learning related to school life at a very early stage for beginners. It helps KANJI that is directly related to school life, settle down to students, and encourages the students to adjust to further study.

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This paper outlines the communication between foreign students and Japanese students via blogs in the “Basic Writing in Japanese Course”. The students wrote blogs once every two weeks as a part of their assignments. Foreign students could express themselves in Japanese through topics such as hobbies and weekend activities and wrote comments on their classmates’ entries. Foreign students were enthusiastic about this project which enable them to communicate with classmates and Japanese students. They felt it helped to improve their writing skills. Japanese students felt that they could understand foreign students’ culture and their language studies through blogs.

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This study was aimed at clarifying learners’ awareness of the use of sentences containing the conditional expression “Tara.” To this end, I conducted a grammaticality judgment test and interviews with Indonesian learners of Japanese. The results revealed that learners are perhaps using “Moshi” regardless of whether it is a hypothetical conditional. In addition, results indicated that learners found it difficult to distinguish between expressions that can have more than one function, such as requests, permission seeking, and suggestions. I would like to expand the scope of the survey to include native speakers of Japanese.

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This paper proposes meaningfulness of continued improvement of the Japanese subjects through developmental evaluation. Out of Academic Japanese subjects for foreign students enrolled in degree programs in their first year, presentation skills class was evaluated to have achieved the overall purpose. Hence, we decided to introduce group presentation in the class to develop collaboration skills. Reevaluation of the subject based on survey confirmed that the students had exercised various approaches to tackle the challenge of online group presentation and that they had collaborated and deepened understanding during the preparation process.

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Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the opportunity of local interaction has been significantly decreased and the place of activity was moved from in-person to online. In 2021, voluntary students from Akita International University organized two online events which aimed to convey Akitas regional food by welcoming participants from domestic and overseas. This paper reflects these events and explores the possibility of online community exchange activities. Although there should be a continuous update on ICT skills and knowledge, we conclude that facilitating “active interaction” is the utmost key in designing comfortable and satisfying online events.

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The authors have conducted an activity aimed at creating a video for exchange students in a Japanese language school describing “life as exchange students in Japan.” The purpose of the video is to help with enhancing these exchange students’ language skills and intercultural awareness. The video also aims to encourage Japanese people with whom the video is shared to be interested in foreigners living in Japan. The creators were interviewed twice – once after editing the video, and again after receiving feedback from Japanese people who watched it. The results were that they felt a sense of achievement, especially regarding collaboration with classmates. They were also proud to see that Japanese viewers and exchange students had deepened their willingness to communicate with each other.

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Volunteer organizations that have been long active hold study sessions and workshops to introduce new ideas, but it is difficult for them to adopt advanced activities. Recent trends in Japanese language education were introduced at a workshop for such a volunteer organization. Based on interviews of the participants after the workshop, we considered the best way to conduct such a workshop in order to incorporate new trends into the organization’s activities. It was confirmed that it would be appropriate for the workshop leader to take a bottom-up approach, building on the participants' existing knowledge of the field to connect it to the new idea.

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In this study, a survey was conducted to find out how international graduate students choose Japanese speech style according to their relationships with their laboratory members. The results showed that they mainly judged their speech style based on their intimacy with the other person. In particular, the choice of casual style was carefully determined, taking into account the level of intimacy, the approach and reaction of the other person, and the discomfort they might feel. It was suggested that a conversational style that expresses friendliness while maintaining a polite style needs to be included as an educational content.

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We report the findings on the Japanese language support for 20 Chinese technical intern trainees, who had different language proficiency levels, working at special nursing homes for the elderly. Some took the N4 level classes, others took the N2/3 level classes. Nonetheless, they all had the same goal: pass the Gino Jisshu Hyoka Shiken. We will explain the support method adopted for the trainees depending on their different proficiency levels by discussing the attempts made by the teachers and the successes achieved by the trainees.

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The purpose of this study is to consider the significance of "writing by hand" for visually-impaired Japanese learners. According to an observation made on the basis of studying two learners and the difficulties involved in studying a professional educational curriculum, increasing the amount of time spent “writing letters by hand” will improve all of the issues identified. Since sighted Japanese teachers are not necessarily proficient in Braille, it is easy for visually impaired learners to choose oral communication and digital document communication utilizing voice input feature. However, in the future, it will be necessary to deliberately increase the time spent "writing letters by hand."

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Case method is a teaching method that students learn through discussions based on case materials. This research scrutinized 11 previous studies related to the case method on Japanese language education, from the viewpoint of 10 categories, and compared this to the case method in Keio business school. As a result, four important suggestions were derived: aiming for renewing the self-model, not limited to interpreting the case, having more detailed case description and lengthen the time of class discussion, sharing participants’ information and explaining the principles and cautionary points in advance, and providing efficient and carefully prepared questions during discussions.

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At the Tokyo University of Social Welfare, Nagoya Campus, foreign staff (Nepali, Vietnamese, Myanmarese and Chinese) are working as regular staff and undertaking tasks for foreign students. Academic Affairs Division Staff at the Institute of the Japanese Language share responsibility for classes with the full-time teachers in addition to supporting students' study, living and career guidance while sharing information. In this article, we will report on our foreign staff’s tasks and consider how they promote student motivation and how they boost the motivation of overseas students prior to their arrival in Japan.

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This study reports on the method of grammar learning using reading comprehension materials and "reconstruction sheets". Inductive learning using the direct method in not suitable for international students in an English Track program, who can only learn Japanese in small groups and intermittently. Therefore, a mixed Japanese-English "reconstruction sheet" in which "English" plays on the role of the teacher's explanations and classmates' assistance was created and adopted as an autonomous learning method to focus on grammatical items, such as function-words. Based on the results of a pretest, post-test, and delayed test, it was determined that this learning method had a certain effect.

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As we move from in-person to online classes due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become imperative to provide learners with verbal production opportunities. For this purpose, we asked students to practice discussions by submitting short videos. We think this type of discussion activity, including sharing opinions with other classmates and exchanging ideas with native Japanese speakers, creates more speaking opportunities for students. We want to apply this activity in an in-person setting as well.

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The aim of this study is to explore an effective Japanese language teaching method and course development for Vietnamese bridge system engineers and IT communicators. Firstly, the pre-course analysis showed that learners faced difficulties in both Japanese language performance and communicative competence. Based on this, IT Japanese and business fundamental skills were focused in the study contents. Besides, as the learners’ proficiency was evaluated as intermediate and upper intermediate level, the flipped classroom and cooperative language learning were implemented, which could contribute to learners’ autonomous learning and interaction improvement. As a result, achievement was obtained and can be applied for future issues.

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Due to the covid-19 situation in Japan, many conferences related to Japanese language education were held online from mid-2020. The Society of Japanese Language Education Methods(JLEM) is one of the few conferences where poster presentations were made in real time online. Poster presentations have several features, such as providing an overview of the research, facilitating active discussion, and providing flexibility in how the presentation is made. JLEM has been exploring how to make the most of these features when poster presentations are made online. This paper reports on how JLEM has examined and improved the online presentation format and management methods.

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An advance organizer (AO) creates a new schema, stimulates already existing knowledge, and can facilitate the retention of learning materials. However, practical research of an AO that uses audiovisual educational materials is hardly seen in reading comprehension instruction. This research carried out practical instruction concerning the effects of an AO that uses audiovisual educational materials on the research subject, which was reading comprehension instruction that uses newspaper articles as teaching materials. It became clear that the results were, first of all, an improvement in reading comprehension. Second, there was the facilitation of study material comprehension, retention of the AO, and associations. Third, there was an effect on retaining a desire to learn.

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This research shows how Japanese language learners assessed “positive reflection.” It focuses on the positive aspects of learners’ learning and life. For this, the author coordinated the “positive reflection” on Japanese writing class at one of the universities in China and analyzed questionnaires about the reflection. As a result, 70% of the students have shown positive responses to “positive reflection” and the main reason was “positive influence on the learners’ mental aspect”. In addition, it was also revealed that more key factor for “positive reflection” is “peer”, in short, making “positive reflection” more collaborative.

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This article will report the development of a teaching material incorporating debates for an Integrated Japanese course targeting intermediate-low level Japanese speakers. Using the format, Parliamentary Debate, it plans out various aspects of a debate such as the selection of topics, the distribution of a speaker-role among several participants, the setting of consultation time, the abolition of questioning during an opponent’s speech along with the setting of questioning and counterargument turns, and the abolition of having judges. Through these efforts, we found that it is possible to incorporate debates immediately after the completion of the beginner level and can expect a certain degree of effectiveness.

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This research aims at developing audio materials for Japanese education focused on recording minutes in business settings. We taught international graduate and undergraduate students using these materials and conducted a survey to examine the difficulty of tasks of the materials. This revealed that 1) the speed of the conversation is fast; 2) it is difficult to recognize and write down unknown words and katakana words; 3) it is challenging to write down the keywords while listening to the conversation. These suggest that we need to consider the target learners and the vocabulary used and devise effective tasks to foster learners’ abilities to record minutes.

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This paper investigates the effectiveness of research writing project in a lower intermediate Japanese language course at an undergraduate level when learners are aware of their audience. To this end, Google Sites was used as the presentation medium where an unspecified number of readers around the world could view their final work. After the conclusion of the course, a questionnaire was conducted to assess the learners’ perceived improvements on research writing skills and Japanese language skills. Twelve learners responded to the questionnaire, and overall they perceived significant increase in both skills. Additional factors need to be addressed in the future, such as learners’ awareness level of copyright and different learning styles.

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Cooperation with peers could be one of the core strategies for learners to control their own emotions, perceptions, and feelings in the process of academic writing, and while directing themselves towards the completion of academic reports. The results of the questionnaire survey revealed that although academic writing beginners experienced a great deal of anxiety, confidence issues, difficulties, and other negative emotions or feelings while writing reports, they found the writing class that had peer response useful and enjoyable through cooperation with others. This has, in turn, helped them gain confidence in writing reports.

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This study attempted to analyze the function of “nantoka,” which is used to ambiguously verbalize a target, in a Corpus of Everyday Japanese Conversation. The results revealed that “nantoka” has the following three functions; (i) indicating ambiguous aspects, (ii) indicating omissions of information, (iii) being used as a variable. Furthermore, in this study, we highlighted that “nantoka” can constitute an important strategy for learners to continue having interactions in Japanese.

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This paper focuses on the Japanese Major Education in the "Isolated Circumstances" of China exemplified by the G-University in JiangXi Province. Through the questionnaire for the Japanese Major learners, this paper has explored that there is a gap between the learners’ learning strategy and learning purpose.

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In this study, the author focused on the pronouns used by female speakers when talking about upsetting events in the past and investigated the strategies they used. The results showed that female speakers used omae for the person being referred to, and also used omae regardless of hierarchy or intimacy. It was also found that female speakers maintained their basic style-level by adding quotation marks and laughter to omae when using omae expressing anger.

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The purpose of this study is to focus on the Japanese language teaching practice in the Japanese language teacher training course at the University, and to manifest what different varieties of practical training are being conducted using the syllabus-based database and KH Coder. As the result, it was common for all the Universities (1) That the students could teach Japanese, and (2) Students also could prepare the teaching materials and lesson plan to teach. Apart from this, each University has its own characteristics.

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The author conducted two listening-and-speaking classes for advanced level students. The content of the classes was the same but class types were different. One class was real-time online, and the other was face to face. Despite the difference in class setting, no significant difference was seen in student scores on the assignments. This study examined what kinds of resources the students referred to while doing the assignments. Based on a post-class questionnaire, we found that the students in online classes focused more on teacher presentations and explanations, while the students in face-to-face classes gained more information from classmates.

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Based on the results of the pilot survey, this study describes the trends in the use of onomatopoeia and metaphorical expressions representing pain in the majority Japanese community and the Chinese minority living in Japan. The survey results indicated that it is difficult for Japanese learners to learn onomatopoeia. Furthermore, it was found that the sensations of pain in Japanese and Chinese are felt and enunciated differently. I would like to collect metaphorical expressions of pain that both communities can understand and create a list of corresponding elements concerning onomatopoeia.

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We report on online teaching discussed in a study group consisting of Akita City Japanese Language community class teachers. Seven study sessions revealed: 1) Improved relationships among teachers facilitating better sharing of information and materials. 2) Increased independence of thinking among teachers. 3) Better cooperation with Akita city enabling the emergence of collaborative classroom management and 4) Increased teacher knowledge of materials and methods. The study reveals that the ease of online study groups fosters communication which in turn, improves teaching methods and strategies. We will continue these online study groups and recommend them for other community language teachers.

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The complexity of Japanese conjunctions increases the difficulty in Japanese writing. In order to improve the writing ability of Chinese JFL learners, this study examines the learning situation of Japanese conjunctions in a four-month composition course. The data analysis in this study is based on the written work and teaching evaluation questionnaires that are collected from 141 students at Guangzhou College of Technology and Business. The results show that the beginner JFL learners can only use a few simple conjunctions at the beginning of the writing course, and they have gradually mastered a variety of conjunctions through a series of writing exercises.

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This paper focuses on the motivation to learn Japanese language for Thai high school students. 440 students from 14 schools were surveyed, and 83% of them were classified into the high-motivation group. As a result of factor analysis, there were four factors that related to motivation: "interest and value recognition in acquiring Japanese," "expectation and realizing for improvement," "teacher's instruction style," and "low workload." From the results of multiple regression analysis, it was suggested that "interest and value recognition in acquiring Japanese" is a factor that greatly influences the level of motivation.

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Through an analysis of the learning strategy characteristics of “excellent learners” in minor courses, similarities were found with intermediate to advanced Japanese learners in “cognition” and “compensation.” These hold the key as effective strategies for acquiring Japanese in less time. Appropriately combining and using “concrete efforts” in “compensation,” “planning” towards this objective in “metacognition,” and “commitment learning” in “cognition” was an effective innovation of “excellent learners.”

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Administrative tasks support educational activities in all fields of Japanese language education, but information sharing and discussions across institutions on the topic are rarely held, and it is difficult to obtain hints to improve operations from the examples of other institutions. Therefore, the authors held online events in August and December 2021 with the aim of creating a forum for sharing information and discussing the administrative tasks that Japanese language teachers oversee. The event in August was a forum in which participants could gain an overview and discuss administrative tasks in general. In the December event, two Japanese language schools presented their case studies of guidance for higher education. The post-event questionnaire suggested that a place for Japanese language teachers to discuss administrative tasks beyond their own institutions is useful.

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Many academic writing textbooks for learners of Japanese explain that the connective expression "kara" (which indicates cause or reason) is a spoken word, and that "tame" or "node" should be used instead when writing reports and papers. However, a preliminary review of the literature showed that it is still used in peer-reviewed papers. In this study, I focused on engineering papers as the target of an investigation and analyzed their usage of "kara" as a connective expression to indicate cause and reason, and also offer suggestions for academic writing classes.

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The authors asked students to submit reports in academic writing instruction for first year university students. The evaluation of the report was based on whether or not the content learned in the class was reflected in the report. At the end of the class, we conducted a questionnaire survey to improve the teaching materials. As a result, there was a high evaluation of concrete teaching materials such as samples and task-based materials. On the other hand, the selection and citation of resource materials were cited as difficult. These were also covered in the current teaching materials, but it is necessary to consider more step-by-step tasks.

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This study aimed to clarify the characteristics of the reading comprehension process of one non- learner of Sino Vietnamese words among Vietnamese candidates who passed the national examination for care workers. The results of the study suggested that non-learners of Sino-Vietnamese words had difficulty in accurately understanding the text of the national exam for care workers, as they were unable to guess the meaning of the words using Sino-Vietnamese words compared to learners of Sino-Vietnamese words.

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Akita International University has been holding online Japanese conversation tables and cultural events organized by voluntary students as part of extracurricular activities. Since participants have different levels of Japanese, from beginner to native level, these activities have been designed to be inclusive for all of them regardless of their Japanese level. In this paper, we will analyze two implementations: "approaches to help participants understand Japanese". and "approaches that can get participants actively involved" We will examine the issues and propose improvement measures such as based on participant observation and questionnaires to the participants.

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The variety of the meanings of the verbs "iku" and "kuru" in Japanese is said to be difficult for Japanese learners to understand (Heo & Ogawa, 2016). In this paper, we observe the "non-spatial movement" usage of noun phrases of "iku" and "kuru" in Tsukuba Web Corpus according to the co-occurrence situation to find the differences. The study has shown that the co-occurrence of <abstract place> is related to the abstraction degree, and the co-occurrence of <body> noun tends to be idiomatic expression.

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Although "youni" has not been regarded as a citation expression, it has a similar function and should be taught as one. We surveyed 35 academic papers to determine the number of times and the context in which "youni" was used. We found that "youni" was used in 40 places: 20 places where the source of information is followed by a summary, and 16 places where a direct quotation is followed by an interpretation of the quote. These two patterns are used differently. For first-year students it seems appropriate to start with the former, easier to understand pattern.

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In this study, we analysed the interactions in a science and technology laboratory to obtain useful information for foreign graduate students to facilitate communication in the laboratory. The results showed that lab members often engage in loose conversations that do not have a clear beginning or ending and include long silences. Understanding the use of such conversational variations as well as smooth and long conversations would be beneficial for international students, and this would contribute to building relationships among lab members.

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This practice is a learner-centered reading comprehension activity in a classroom for adult Japanese learners. I analyzed how they perceived this activity and considered its potential as an activity. It became clear that they felt a certain significance in this activity and took it positively. At the same time, it was also found that there was a conflict between the merits of the learner-centered and the merits of the teacher-led due to the time-effectiveness of the teacher-led and the difficulty of communication between the learners.

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In this study, the motivations of students choosing the Japanese language as their general optional course and as their second foreign language course were analyzed by means of a questionnaire survey. By comparing the selective motivations of the two courses, it is not difficult to find that there are not only some similarities but also some differences in the selective motivations of the two courses. By illustrating the differences between the two selective motivations, the teaching quality of the general optional course of the Japanese language can be improved.

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The particle "tari" has an "exemplifying usage" to show examples and also a "non-exemplifying usage" used for hedging in modern Japanese. However, there is a tendency to downplay "non-exemplifying usage" in Japanese language education. Hence, this study investigates the frequency of use and generational differences to show the importance of "non-exemplifying usage". "Non-exemplifying usage" of “tari” is no longer considered to be a young people’s word and the paper clarifies that it is now widely used by 20% of native speakers of Japanese and is widespread among all generations.

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