Here I discuss the whole concept of community-based Japanese language education, the required qualities and abilities of personnel involved therein, and the content and method of human resources development. It is essential for community-based Japanese language education to function as a system that can ensure language competence for social engagement and provide for mutual learning that leads to the reformation of local communities, and that specialists be assigned to enhance the ability of the system to achieve these goals. The human resources engaged in community-based Japanese language education may be classified into three types of professionals: system coordinators, Japanese language coordinators and Japanese language education specialists, working together with Japanese language volunteers. The required qualities and abilities, and the content of human resources development, vary according to these respective roles, but a common emphasis is placed on such points as a hands-on approach, reflection, sharing and collaboration, and continuity. Moreover, as a perspective to overcome the issue of asymmetry among participants in community-based Japanese language education from the human resources development standpoint, two points are cited, namely, developing human resources including foreigners, and ensuring reflection on/in practice.

It has long been said that the aging Japanese society is suffering from a shortage of care workers in the field of long-term care. To cope with this, the Government of Japan has been striving to accept foreign workers in the field of long-term care in various forms. This is not only unique to Japan but also becoming to be an international issue, with social and economic development, medical care and welfare advancement, and demographic changes across the Asian countries. Therefore, Japan must implement internationally-minded policies and programs when accepting foreign care workers.

In the field of long-term care, communication between care workers and care users is extremely important.

This paper outlines a 10 year plan for improvements in accepting foreign care workers, made by Japanese language educators through research and conference activities, collaborations with the public and academic sectors, and analyses done on Japanese language skills required in the field of long-term care. There is a focus on the “Standard Japanese Proficiency Can-Do Statement (KCDS) for Care Workers,” and we maintain that the KCDS will be indispensable for the Japanese language education of care workers in Japan in the future.

This paper also introduces the diversifying situation of the “status of residence” for care workers.

Training for instructors at Japanese language schools in the past had been left up to individual schools, with few resources available for peer support among instructors at different schools. Later, due to increased awareness on the part of schools and instructors of the need for such support, more attention was paid to improving the quality of teaching, and progress was made in establishing networking among schools leading to great changes in the accepted methods and actual practice of instructor training. However, in recent years students learning Japanese at these schools have greatly increased in number, and problems with the current training methods have appeared.

Accordingly, this paper identifies the distinctive characteristics of Japanese language schools, provides an overview of how instructor training developed in this context, and clarifies the challenges we are facing today. Further, we examine instructor training in Japanese language schools based on a report issued in March 2018 by the Agency for Cultural Affairs entitled “Nihongo kyōiku no yōsei kenshū no arikata ni tuite”. For instructor training to be effective there must be shared practice based on dialog, as well as coordination and collaboration with other institutions and other fields. This paper makes four proposals centering on this coordination.

This paper examines practices of Australian Japanese language teacher training and practicum, using a case study of one university. Three key aspects of Japanese language teacher training in Australia were identified. Firstly, Australia hosts a large number of Japanese learners in primary and secondary schools, which makes it essential to train primary and secondary teachers. Secondly, no systematic training is currently being offered to develop Japanese language lecturers for tertiary institutions. Thirdly, Australia hosts many teacher-trainees from Japanese universities who engage in short-term teaching practice. This paper introduces the Japanese language education practices of the university from two perspectives: Communities of Practice and Boundary Crossing. Through these perspectives, the paper demonstrates how Japanese language educators contribute to teacher training by providing opportunities for experiential learning through solid Japanese language education practices. In the case study, the Japanese language program aims to nurture learners' abilities to connect to others through using Japanese. This paper finds that the teacher-trainees' engagement in the program fosters their development as future teachers of Japanese language.

Increasing diversity in Japanese language learning/teaching in today's world requires a well-planned curriculum and capable teachers. The newly published report from the Agency for Cultural Affairs introduces a revised teacher education curriculum to meet the ever-increasing needs for teacher training and teacher development.

This paper examines the report and proposes to establish two new accreditation systems: one to assess the institutions which administer the teacher education, and another to assess and support individual teacher development. The systems need not be government institutions. The professional members of the Japanese language education community should work together to create these institutions for the sake of mutual enhancement and support.

Based on the results of an interview survey conducted five times over five years and ten months for one nonnative speaking Japanese teacher (teacher A), the present study examined and analyzed their change in beliefs and their process of growth as a teacher. The speech protocol of Teacher A was analyzed with a modified form of the Grounded Theory Approach. It turns out that teacher A’s beliefs transformed in various ways. The transformation process involved teacher training and meeting attendance in Japan, collaborative work with native and non-native speaking Japanese teachers in their home country, and introduction of new educational concepts and textbooks. In addition, changes in roles from learner to educator, and then from educator to teacher training coordinator also played a part. In particular, the transformation of their beliefs regarding the role of teachers and educational goals is clear, and encompassed not only practical aspects, but their perspective and way of thinking in general. These results show a process of change in one teacher's beliefs, and also part of the growth process of non-native speaking teachers.

There is a need for more in-service training of school teachers that incorporates teachers’ self-directed planning. With regards to teacher training for Japanese language instruction, recommendations have been made for training methods based on classroom practice, but few case studies exist. This study, which was conducted over about five years in Isesaki city, Gunma Prefecture, involves a series of training initiatives that associate “autonomous research group activities” featuring autonomous and independent teacher training programs with “board of education training” sponsored by the city’s board of education. The study aims to examine changes in the contents and methods of the city education training initiatives and the related factors. The results indicated that the teachers who participated in the autonomous research group worked together with the supervising director to plan and operate the city’s board of education training, thus showing the way towards converting the program into problem-solving-type training centered on workshops tackling regional educational issues and practical issues formulated by the teachers themselves. One factor of “bottom-up” training, in which teachers themselves plan and manage the contents of the training according to their own practice, is that the thoughts and attitudes of teachers who promote activities and managers’ advice have an actual impact.

The purpose of this study was to elucidate how Japanese-heritage language learners develop proficiency in bilingual writing longitudinally. We analyzed samples of Japanese writing produced by a German-Japanese boy learning Japanese as a heritage language, as he progressed from the fourth to the ninth grade; his dominant language was German. Although the development of his proficiency in writing Japanese in terms of the number of characters and his lexical and syntactic variety was somewhat delayed compared to Japanese monolingual children in Japan, no significant difference was observed in his discourse level. Close examination of his compositions in the two languages revealed the developmental process to comprise the following two stages: logical connections within the texts improved through enhanced use of conjunctive expressions and grammatical complexity, and textual structure and rhetoric became increasingly sophisticated. These changes were observed to occur first in the German writing samples and may have contributed to subsequent improvements in the boy’s Japanese writing. The boy wrote compositions in Japanese by skillfully using his limited range of Japanese expressions to achieve a discourse level that was almost equivalent to that of his German compositions. However, he experienced difficulties with grammatically correct sentence construction and the use of kanji idioms to discuss complex topics. Based on these findings, we offer some recommendations for teaching aimed at enhancing the writing proficiency of Japanese-heritage language learners.

The purpose of this research was to compile a corpus-based educational word list (hereinafter referred to as, “the List”) for learners of Japanese as a foreign language. The List is a receptive vocabulary list used for reading Japanese text. The importance of each word in learning Japanese was quantified by dispersion and utility measurements. The level of each word in the List was determined by its rank for word importance and word-familiarity which indicates the difficulty of the word.

To assess the practicality of the List, a text coverage survey was conducted. It was found that text coverage of the vocabulary in the List was wider for text used by native speakers and text written for Japanese language learners than the JLPT word list.

This paper draws on the language socialization framework (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) to examine how the use of speech styles, specifically the plain style, changes among five students studying in Japan during a period of two months. Conversations between the Japanese learners and their Japanese classmates were recorded. The data shows that although the students primarily mixed the two styles, after two months all students used the plain style almost consistently in their conversations. Concerning the use of the plain style, they employed various interactional functions of the plain style in conversations. Findings suggest that daily interactions with “experts” in the target language community, i.e., the Japanese native classmates, contribute to acquisition of Japanese variation.

It is important to train university students in communication skills to enable them to survive in the present-day diverse society. Both international students and Japanese students at Japanese universities must learn Japanese honorific expressions. This paper describes the use of the student-centered Jigsaw method in enabling students to learn about communication, including honorifics, which is called “honorific communication.” The Jigsaw method has been reported to enable deep learning and endow students with a sense of responsibility. Using this method, students who participated in this study gained full knowledge of communication skills and a deep understanding of different cultures by learning about “honorific communication,” which emphasizes variations in communication style according to relationships, age, and region. The results of this study indicate that the Jigsaw method is successful in enabling intercultural understanding as well as the construction of knowledge.