Human life can be seen as a continual process of self-realization, of moving towards a state in which one feels that one is living a life that is true to oneself. To achieve this goal one must seek to understand oneʼs own identity and design a career on the basis of this self-awareness, plotting a course that will lead to the formation of the mode of life or career that one wishes to achieve. Self-awareness is to be achieved by reviewing the course of oneʼs life from the past to the present, and on into the future, and examining oneʼs evolving relations with the people in oneʼs life, thus seeing oneself as it were in reverse, "oneself as other in the otherʼs eyes" (Washida 1996, pp. 105-25). The title assigned for this paper is "Career Formation for Young People with Multi-lingual and Multi-cultural Backgrounds," but it is doubtful whether this sort of background is truly realized for children with ties to foreign countries. A multi- lingual or multi-cultural background should not merely be seen as a skill for participation in society, one that enhances oneʼs employability; it is also vital to incorporate it into oneʼs self-awareness, which will guide oneʼs path to self-realization. Japanese society thus has a duty to ensure that children with ties to foreign countries will be able to maintain their heritage languages and cultures.

In this study I examine the life histories of three women in international marriages with Japanese men who are living in a rural town. Based on their own narratives and on observations of the environment in which they live, I analyze their career formation in terms of work career and life career, through their choice of occupation and status achieved therein, through their education, and family and social relationships. In the course of this analysis I look at how their acquisition of and proficiency in the Japanese language has interacted with these aspects of their lives, the meaning it has for them and how it has supported their lives.

From this analysis, employing the concepts of resource and identity work, the results show that the women, benefitting from such resources as ethnicity, perceived whiteness, and facility in Japanese, engaged in the formation of their work and life careers while affirming their personal identities (identity work). Finally, in order for foreigners living in Japan to achieve a high quality of life and to fully participate in society, I posit the need for "literacy compensation" on the part of the community to accept and make up for any deficiencies in Japanese literary, and for "literacy security" on the part of local and national public institutions to guarantee the opportunity for Japanese acquisition.

In recent years, the reception of workers in the caregiving and nursing fields has greatly accelerated. In particular, the routes to employment as caregivers in Japan have become more diverse and complex: Japan has entered into Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) that make provisions for Certified Care Worker Candidates, established a Care Worker Residence Status, added Care Worker to the employment fields covered by the Technical Intern Training Program, and has also made provision for caregiving under the Specified Skill Worker Residence Status. This paper first provides an overview of these provisions, and of the career paths that they enable for workers. Then it presents the results of interviews conducted with former EPA Nurse and Certified Care Worker Candidates, elucidating the actual state of their career formation and how they think about their careers. In conclusion, the paper points out problems with these provisions and social issues that emerged from these interviews, and makes suggestions for improvements.

In Japan, the low birth rate and aging of society have led to a decline in the working population and a marked expansion in internships that promote the professional and social autonomy of young people. Business internship programs for undergraduate students before they begin job hunting will doubtlessly have a great effect on career formation, not just for Japanese students, but for international students as well, who are counted on to play a leading role as globally oriented human resources. Universities are aiming for qualitative transformation of their curriculums, in which the active learning made possible by internships will form an integral part.

This paper examines career as a lifelong process of development. First it gives an overall explanation of internships based on government and business surveys. Then it takes up case studies of international students, clarifying how they deepen their knowledge of culture and language in the course of their interactions with the business environment and with the diverse range of people they encounter there, and how this experience feeds in to their quest for their future mode of life.

Learners of Japanese abroad are not limited to adults who are learning Japanese as a foreign language in institutions that provide Japanese language instruction. In this era of increasing personal mobility, factors such as immigration and international marriage mean that learning Japanese must be seen in the context of people whose lives span the globe, transcending distinctions of Japan/abroad or Japanese/foreigner. In order to foster such global citizens, one must not compartmentalize people and their lives between Japan and abroad, but view their lives as a single continuum, and find ways to support the significance of each individualʼs life. For this purpose, professionals in teaching foreign languages, teaching Japanese as a foreign language, teaching Japanese as a native language, and in teaching non-language subjects, must coordinate their activities and develop a plurilingual education framework that will enable people to find their place in society.

Aiming to select words that have been potentially ignored both in Japanese language education for medical purposes and in medical education, we analyzed words that are neither medical terms nor general words. First, we extracted words that were significantly representative of the National Examination for Medical Practitioners, comparing word frequency in the exam to the "Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese" by calculating the log-likelihood ratio of each word. Then we extracted the words that were included as headwords or as part of headwords in the Japan Medical Associationʼs "Japan Medical Terminology Web Edition"; however, we excluded those included in the "Japanese Learnersʼ Dictionary Ver. 1.0." We confirmed that a certain number of words are considered as being neither medical nor general, and they account for 12.5% of all words (272 words). Words with frequencies of 5 were analyzed in detail, and it was concluded that these could be classified into 8 categories, such as "parts of a body or location within a body" and "medical conditions of patients." Among these words, there are some that are not used in a non-medical context.

A basic Japanese sentence form that expresses the existence of inanimate objects is ... ni ... ga ... aru. However, in actual use, the use of aru is limited, and it is not uncommonly substituted with V-te iru. In Japanese language education, expressions of existence are extremely important. While both aru and V-te iru are basic terms, the conditions for their proper usage have not been made sufficiently clear.

This paper clarifies the conditions for the proper use of aru and V-te iru in sentences formed from [place of existence] ni [existing object] ga {aru/V-te iru} to express the existence of an inanimate object. Through the analysis of relevant examples, this paper asserts that the three conditions of transfer process, volition, and unity, are closely related to the proper use of aru and V-te iru.

The greatest portion of Japanese language education outside Japan is that conducted in secondary schools. However, the number of studies in this field is still inadequate in Japan. This study analyzed research trends in 155 papers on Japanese language education at the secondary level overseas which are published in academic journals and bulletins issued by the Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language and the Japan Foundation. As a result, the following three typical trends were discovered. Most of the reports are on (1) practices aiming for the attainment of education policy goals, (2) practices aiming to formulate a better education system, and (3) most of the investigations are carried out within the limits of areas where practices were conducted. At the same time, the analysis also revealed that there are very few studies aiming to develop theory for Japanese language education in secondary education by comprehensively reviewing practices spanning different areas, countries and policies. The author concludes by pointing out that it is necessary to develop a theory for Japanese language education for secondary education.

In order to develop a teaching method to help graduate-level international students and researchers who have come to Japan with little or no knowledge of Japanese, but who can devote only a limited amount of time to receiving formal instruction, we designed learning materials and activities for use in a short-term introductory course. The focus was on developing learnersʼ skills to make use of their own environment, where they are daily exposed to real spoken communication, as a learning resource; they were encouraged to observe and catch expressions used in their laboratory in order to share them in class, so that they should gradually become aware of their own ability to learn the language by themselves and become sufficiently motivated to continue learning throughout their stay. Learnersʼ evaluation at the completion of the course showed that both the materials and activities were greatly welcomed by the participants, who were eager to join in the laboratoryʼs predominately Japanese community; they reported frequently using acquired expressions to initiate interactions as well as actively making observations.

This paper describes a teacher training program aimed to improve listening activities in the classroom, which is conducted in a Japanese language institute authorized by the Ministry of Justice. In the program, after face-to-face training with before and after task sets, each teacher was encouraged to use the training contents in their practice. As a result, after three months it was confirmed that all the teachers improved in making lesson plans using the training contents. At the same time, issues other than lesson planning, such as operation of equipment, delivery skills, and classroom management were identified. Therefore, two learning opportunities were added: 1) Watching demonstrations and sharing tips for listening activities, and 2) visiting a colleagueʼs classroom to observe and discuss about the lesson with the peer. Nine months after the first face-to-face training, a follow-up survey showed that all the teachers used one or more of the training contents in their practice, while, on the other hand, less than half felt there were positive changes in their lessons. Continuous efforts are required to improve teaching quality.

Ideally, a placement speaking test should be administered to as many examinees as possible within a short period of time; the evaluation procedure should be simple and convenient, with highly reliable and valid results. To accomplish this, a Japanese speaking test task with an evaluation tool consisting of rubric and voice samples was developed. Test reliability and validity were verified with the implementation of an experiment involving four Japanese teachers (raters) assessing the test results using the evaluation tool. The test task situation "refusal" was employed with 32 students from beginner to the advanced level participating. A high correlation between this speaking test and the writing placement test was observed, with a corresponding high correlation with the Simple Performance- Oriented Test (SPOT) which requires aural skills. In contrast, there was a low correlation with written receptive skills; regardless, the criterion-related validity of this test was reasonably and conclusively satisfied. The task and evaluation tools are well suited to evaluate the learnersʼ speaking ability, ensuring excellent reliability; assessing each learnerʼs level required only one to two minutes with high consistency and correlation among raters. Although intermediate level assessments appear to be more challenging, this test task and evaluation tool can be very valuable as a Japanese speaking test.