This paper introduces our CAI Teaching Materials to help reading in Japanese. Generally, it is difficult for students to grasp of the relation between topic of discourse and discourse structure, and among of units of discourse structure, both are hierarchically organized. Thus we plan that the students should be aware of understanding the process using a visual information on the computer's display. It is because that computer is suitable to show this process with effect of sound, color and movement. The result of the whole process is memorized in computer, and will then generate it for materials in class activities.

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The aim of this paper is to develop multimedia System which focuses on the sound system in the spoken language, to develop Japanese learners' listening comprehension skills. The multimedia system deals with both segmental and suprasegmental features of the Japanese sound system.

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In considering a curriculum of Japanese education for foreign children, it is very important that we recognize elements which students will acquire rather easily and those which they will not. Now I am conducting research on longitudinal study on acquisition of Japanese as a second language on two Brazilian children who are in the fourth grade of public school. This controlled study concerns the process of Japanese passive and causative. The study also compares the children's linguistic development to that of native children, making clear the special characteristics of foreign children's language acquisition.

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Homeroom was set as "synthetic study time" beyond the regular classes on the intensive course of Japanese. A lot of activities were done 1)to have a sense of solidarity in the same course, 2)to have more practical opportunity for using Japanese, and 3)to take care of their mental health. It could help adult learners to reduce the frustration and promote the motivation.

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By selecting visitors considering their backgrounds (occupations, one's locality etc.), interest, age, and sex, the author coordinated the visitor sessions for the advanced-level discussion class. The Japanese Partner System of The International Student Center, Osaka University, having 121 members, enables us to invite visitors suitable for the topic and activity of the class. The interaction between the students and the visitors through various kinds of discussion activities has been introduced.

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This paper analyses phonological errors in kanji reading tests. Errors involved the mora geminate, mora nasal and voiced consonants, as well as vowel shortening and vowel lengthening. In a listening comprehension test focussing on phonological length, a tendency was found, especially in initially accented words, to shorten long vowels in the last syllable. By contrast, vowel lengthening occurs especially in unaccented words. It also appears that palatalized sounds affect learners' perception of length contrasts.

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Most textbooks for intermediate-advanced level learners are based on a topic syllabus or a communicative function syllabus. Grammatical and lexical expressions that appear more or less randomly in the text are picked up for practice. We are developing a textbook for intermediate-advanced level learners based on a grammatical syllabus. In this textbook, we will show the learners what motivates us to choose each sentence structure. 'Point of view'(spatial, temporal and psychological) and 'controlability' are the key concepts motivating syntactic choice.

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Adnominal clauses are often overlooked in teaching expressions of emotion to foreign learners of Japanese. However, expressions of emotion have unique patterns for expressing the voice-like opposition in meaning. Foreign learners tend to be confused in distinguishing between the experiencer and the causer of emotion described by the verbs and adjectives of emotion in adnominal clauses. This paper provides key points for teaching those expressions in classes.

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A new type of Kanji learning material has been proposed. In the material, 1000 Kanji are introduced as 500 pairs. Each pair is made from strongly related two Kanji. It is expected that the reduction of the number, from 1000 to 500, makes students feel easier. In addition, 500 pairs were divided into 3 groups. Group A pairs are those introduced in classroom, and Group B&C pairs are those which should be learned by students themselves. In order to promote self-learning, most of the Group B pairs should be easy, e.g., daily use words.

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What kinds of processes do Japanese language learners use in reading Japanese? To study this issue, we divided students into three major groups according to their native language background: Kanji Group, Non-Kanji Group, and Partial Kanji Group (for students who live in an environment where Kanji is visibly present, even though they don't use it in their own language). In 1999, we reported on three students in the Non-Kanji Group using Video camera. In this paper, we report differences in reading processes between students in the Kanji Group (5 Chinese students) and students in the Partial Kanji Group (4 Korean students). In this experiment we found the following two points: 1. Higher level students in both groups (Chinese and Korean) use both dictionary and DL System often. 2. Three out of five Chinese students used a dictionary after finding the pronunciation of a Kanji from the DL System, but Korean students did not use a similar process. Based on these results, and on the results obtained in our previous study (ref. 7), we want to further develop our support system for reading skills in Japanese for foreign students of the Japanese language.

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In the process of developing CAI "Japanese conjugation drill" software, we conducted monitoring research, with students from two courses within the International Student Center as our subjects. Due to its orientation as a self-study tool, it was found to be more effective in the low-achievement group. Within the course of study, it would be best used as supplementary teaching materials, or as materials for self learning.

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This is a pilot study aimed at investigating the use of kanji dictionaries by beginning-level learners of Japanese. Nine learners were assigned the task of looking up unknown kanji in such dictionaries. Their search process was recorded on video and follow-up interviews were video- and tape-recorded. Data was analyzed according to time taken, search method (SKIP system, radical, on-kun readings), number of searches, achievement of task. Findings are that (1) learners used the SKIP system most, followed by radical and on-kun readings; (2) search method, number of searches, achievement of task, and details of incorrect searches differed with kanji; (3) causes of incorrect searches related to the difficulty of SKIP classification, stroke-count, the recognition of radical and phonetic elements, and the reading.

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Using an intranet software, we developed a Japanese-composition course plan for non-Japanese students. The aim of this course plan is: 1) to train students' ability to compose an essay that is logically arranged, and 2) to create a 'multilateral' communicative situation through peer revision during their writing processes. This paper introduces a practical way to develop a course plan using an intranet software, its effectiveness, and some specific suggestions for conducting peer revisions.

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The purpose of this study is to find the characteristics on structural complication in compositions written by advanced Japanese learners (non-native speaker: NNS) compared with those of Japanese native speakers (JNS). The data was obtained by assigning a research essay to 32 Chinese speaking NNS and 30 JNS. The results were: 1. NNS used many more adverbial clauses, especially more conditional clauses and concessive clauses marked by "keredomo" than JNS. JNS used more final clauses. 2. JNS used more adjective clauses. Antecedents of NNS's adjective clause were limited to subject and complement.

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The characteristic of these student-orientated activities is that both the international and the Japanese students should benefit from them. These provide the international students with opportunities to practice Japanese, to make friends and to learn about Japan, while giving Japanese students a chance to experience foreign cultures and of practicing as (future) language teachers. Using one 90 minute-class per week, under the supervision of the lecturer, students plan activities such as introducing their countries / Japanese affairs, holding debates, playing games, etc. This paper will go into details of principles, contents and development, student's evaluation, characteristics and understanding of the volunteer students concerning these activities.

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Nishina, Virach and Okumura (1999) exemplify 1,000 concepts around which to develop a multilingual learning system for technical Japanese courses. As an extension of this continuing research, this paper proposes a multilingual dictionary, which contains both meaning and grammar information, visually linked to a target text. We utilize the IPAL and CICC dictionaries for this purpose. We use the IPAL (Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan Lexicon of the Japanese Language for computers) dictionary format as syntactic and semantic information in our new dictionary. We also use the CICC(Center of The International Cooperation for Computerization) Technical Term Dictionary, encompasing 5 languages, to select basic learning words deriving from a Japanese language learning standard authorized by the Japan Foundation.

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We have been developing a textbook for Japanese pronunciation based on the Prosody Graph (Kushida et al. (1995)). This study investigates how much it covers the intonation contour of sentences in a textbook for beginners. The results show that by applying the rules they can pronounce 88 percent of all sentences in the textbook for beginners correctly, without any sound.

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In our last report (1999, 3) on the self-correction ability of Japanese learners, we found that mistakes regarding grammar and vocabulary needed correcting by teachers. In order to make learners aware of mistakes in grammar, vocabulary and paragraphing, self-correction activity was conducted using an improved correction sheet. As a result, it seems that learners have the ability to correct mistakes found by themselves. However, there were many errors which they could not find in grammar and in vocabulary usage.

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SPOT was developed as a simple test of Japanese language ability for JFL students. In this paper, we examined the Japanese language ability of elementary school children using SPOT and found the following: 1) even with the difficult version, grade 3 and grade 5 children scored quite high marks compared to JFL students 2) the correlations between SPOT and a vocabulary comprehension test, and SPOT and a kanji reading ability test were found to be significant 3) the types of errors made by the children can possibly be explained by the factors like how well they screen the context of the sentences, the degree of familiarity of structures, and the ability to watch sound and written characters.

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