Since there is a large difference between introductory level Japanese and technical Japanese, the introduction of technical Japanese to intensive course students should be done very carefully. Some students refuse to study technical Japanese, since they put priority in learning daily life Japanese. In order to introduce technical Japanese smoothly, it should be introduced as an extension of introductory level Japanese. In the new trial program of '96, kanji education has played an essential role as a pipe between introductory level Japanese and technical Japanese. Kanji which appear in a technical Japanese textbook have been precedently taught in the usage of daily life. Smooth introduction has been successfully performed in the trial program.

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This study is a longitudinal case study of a child who is studying Japanese as a second language, focused on negotiation of meaning. Through participant observation by the researcher, conversation between NS and NNS was analyzed. It was found that the length of NNS's stay in Japan and the pattern in exchanging information make a difference in the frequency of negotiation of meaning. Linguistic modification to make input and output comprehensible was also found in negotiation of meaning.

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Around 20,000 foreign seafarers have shore leave in Port of Tomakomai, Hokkaido annually. And more than 8,500 of them visit the Tomakomai Seaman's Club. The club is an NPO, and volunteers work to assist seafarers in various matters. One of these is providing a survival Japanese booklet. A questionnaire survey of foreign seafarers on Japanese language use was carried out in order to find out their attributes and needs in Japanese language. This paper presents the results of the survey. The analysis will be used to develop new survival Japanese materials.

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What should be learnt in Japanese composition class? In this paper, we report the composition materials and class activities for elementary Japanese learners. Then we will make the following points : 1) in composition class, quality and quantity of information should be examined, 2) to do this kind of activity, the reader and text-type of learners' composition should be restricted. The above points are also helpfull to evaluate learners' composition.

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This study reports on an experiment in the teaching of Japanese composition at the intermediate level which focused on the students' confidence and motivation by having students establish their personal objectives and conduct self-evaluations. Using e-mail was included as a motivating component Results of a questionnaire conducted before the course demonstrated the students' lack of confidence to write in Japanese and their strong interest in writing accurately, and a follow-up survey after the course shows positive feedback to the use of e-mail. According to a survey of their compositions, students' writing skills, as shown in sentence length, sentence complexity, and use of kanji, improved; nevertheless, students' self-estimation was very low. We need to establish an instruction system which would increase students' confidence for writing in Japanese.

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It is pointed out that in textbooks based on a communicative approach, the amount of grammatical items at early stages is very large and the learner's load might be very great since they aim at introducing natural conversations as a very early stage. Thus this study investigated the amount of grammatical items in main Japanese textbooks for beginners. The results showed that even in sentence pattern oriented textbooks, the amount of grammatical items is very large at early stages and it varies greatly at later stages.

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During the last 3 years, Japanese language education has changed a lot. Foreign residents have increased much more than foreign students studying Japanese. Under the idea of multiculturalism, Japanese language education has to alter its purpose from teaching appropriate Japanese to creating new language culture for both Japanese and the learners. And this education has to contribute that learners and Japanese language instructors could participate legitimately in the Japanese society.

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The purpose of this research is to investigate how learners without kanji background are actually learning kanji. The author carried out a questionnaire survey to 72 students in the kanji classes at the International Student Center, University of Tsukuba, in spring 1996. It concerned learners' kanji learning history, goal and objectives of learning kanji, and learning methods. From the results, the author proposes the necessity of an evaluation method of kanji learning.

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The learners who come to Japan as the groups of one year programmes to study In universities In Japan are quite different populations from the other learners. To analyze the levels, the needs and the problems of this new groups, an effective course design is proposed for intermediate level Kanjl class.

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By analyzing the cause of students' miscommunication in conversation, we have concluded that one's knowledge of Japanese grammar and vocabulary is not enough to communicate with Japanese. The understanding of natural order and function of expressionshelps making the communication more efficient. Quick verbal or nonverbal response is also important in conversation. We gave the students the task of talking with Japanese. We then held a discussion in class focused on the issues above, rather than grammar and vocabulary. This teaching method worked well as a communicative approach.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the occurrence of intra-sentential and extra-sentential code-switching in interaction between a Japanese adult who has Hungarian ability and Hungarian children who are learning Japanese as a second language, from the view point of Japanese second language acquisition. The result shows that when the children's Japanese competence progressed, code-switching decreased. Depending on the situation, study and free conversation, different types of code-switching occurred.

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The purpose of this study is to analyze "informative" scenes of model conversations found in four elementary Japanese textbooks, by applying the idea "context of situation" proposed in Halliday and Hassan(1985). The notion "informative" is defined in this paper as supplying information, which is new for the receiver and which the informer believes to be true (cf. Grice 1975, Leech 1980). The following three points are investigated: 1) character of the information itself, 2) standpoint of the informer, 3) relationship between informer and receiver. The conclusion is that there exists a certain tendency in each textbook. The most significant difference is found in the informer's standpoint and his/her attitude to the receiver.

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We have developed materials that systematically train advanced students to autonomously revise explanatory writing. These teaching materials has 3 characteristic: 1) Criteria for the revision are established through students' mutual interaction. 2) Learners autonomously revise text they wrote using internalized criteria for the revision. 3) Revision is divided into 2 steps: a)revising text organization and content, b) correcting grammar. In this paper, we report the purpose, creation, and organization of teaching materials.

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Kanji teaching for Non-Kanji users, there are many researches and text books. But there are few texts on the market for Kanji users. It seems that teachers make their teaching materials. I selected News Papers, that are authentic materials, and tried to design classes focused on teaching Kanji. Here is a report that I have done on classes of the first semester this year.

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The pronoun anata is introduced in textbooks without adequate explanations. Often this leads to misunderstanding in learners about the usage of pronouns in actual conversations and about the structure of Japanese language. In my classrooms I instruct students to observe and listen to the actual use of anata by Japanese speakers, and then I discuss various usages of anata with students. Finally we discuss possible socio-cultural backgrounds of various uses of pronouns.

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If reading is not a passive perception, but an active comprehension, which includes switching of reading-mode, extensive reading should be given for elementary level learners. From this point of view, we have developed extensive reading materials for elementary Japanese learners. Through the class activities, most of learners' evaluation indicated these materials are challenging and useful.

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What is "Autonomy" in Kanji class ? How to retain Kanjis in learners' memory ? These are the problems that shoud be discussed. In this paper class-works for advanced-level students in 15 weeks are reported. This class is designed to put leaners' Kanji knowledge in order and to make learners do "autonomous" activity. The features of this class are 1) putting leaners' Kanji knowledge in order by radicals, 2) looking up vocabulary that learners need in dictionary by themselves, 3) sharing the vocabulary that leaners looked up. This study aim to discuss the role of class-works to make sutdents "memorize" Kanji and "autonomy" in advanced-level Kanji class.

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In this paper I propose a teaching method for Kanji compounds words commonly found in scientific and technical fields. A 6 month language course docs not provide the necessary knowledge of Kanji or students from non-Kanji countries to read Japanese documents in their particular fields. However, we have noticed that a total of only 350-1200 characters are combined to form the common technical terms for each scientific and technical field. It seems possible for a student to master the limited array of Kanji particular to their own field, if Kanji classes are used to teach the system of generating compound Kanji words. We examined how students with some knowledge of Kanji analyze Kanji compound words into their component morphemes, in order to determine what information is associated with each Kanji to enable itto be recognized as a meaningful unit. Our survey revealed that certain information about morphological elements in a Kanji compound word, such as prefix or suffix, act as meaning partition markers to allow students to recognize a morphological unit effectively.

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