With Japanʼs regional communities experiencing a continuing decline in population, sustainable regional development has become a pressing issue. A key element of this overall challenge is the problem of who will help support such development. Hiring foreign workers to assist in the running of regional economies is one approach that has been widely adopted. Looking further into the future, it is hoped that foreign workers will also go on to play a broader supportive role within their communities. This paper considers the efforts of one co-author, Mr. Kosuge, who has sought to help foreign workers contribute to sustainable regional development in ways beyond the mere use of their labour power. We have found three challenges that need to be addressed for foreign workers to be successfully welcomed into a regional community. First, fostering trust within the regional community towards foreign workers; second, supporting the career development of foreign workers; and third, strengthening the ties between foreign workers and regional communities. We suggest that Japanese language classes in regional areas can be reconsidered in light of the above challenges. In our view, such classes possess five functions that can assist in addressing these three challenges. They therefore have a vital role to play in assisting with the sustainable development of regional areas.

There are many children of multicultural backgrounds enrolled in Japanese public schools, and the number of students requiring Japanese language instruction is increasing. Now that coexistence of cultures in Japan is expanding due to the countryʼs policies and economic conditions, it is necessary to reassess the support provided for these multicultural students in order for all students to effectively receive education, and also to re-evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of the currently provided support. Using the empowerment theory, an investigation into the support provided at the time of entering elementary school for a child and her multicultural family found that her school and a community support group cooperated to provide appropriate support, thus providing the child and her family with hope and encouragement for life in Japan. Upon analysis of this specific case through one year of continuous observation, it was confirmed that the child was able to regain her confidence and sense of self through heightened awareness within her family. School teachers also gained self-efficacy in supporting these students, which paved the way toward the realization of a "collaborative society" of multicultural backgrounds. Focusing on awareness of both the supporters and those receiving the support, aspects of empowerment as a result of early school support were clarified, which leads to proposing a continuation model for building public support for students and families of multicultural backgrounds.

The authors have been researching Japanese medical terms and developing teaching materials around those terms in order to effectively support international students who study medicine in Japan and ultimately aim to pass the National Medical Practitioners Qualifying Examination. Since there is a diverse range of vocabulary in medical texts, it is essential to collect medical terms comprehensively and classify them in a systematic manner, in order to help students learn medical terms effectively. In this study, a medical book corpus was constructed from the texts of medical books. The texts were classified into 27 types of medical departments, and the words contained therein were collected and classified, as a preparatory step to create systematic word lists for medicine. Then, high-frequency particles, affixes, verbs, and domain-specific nouns were analyzed to clarify the unique features of medical texts. It was found that there are some unique affixes and verbs in medical texts. Also, compiling word lists for each medical department seems to be useful, as each different medical department has many different domain- specific nouns.

There is an urgent need to develop self-directed Japanese language teachers by engaging them in reflective practice. In response to this need, classroom observation has been recommended as a method of teacher development (Okazaki & Okazaki, 1997). Aiming to support the practice of classroom observation, this paper attempts to investigate how teachers, both observers and observees, perceive the purpose of classroom observation carried out as part of a teacher training program at a Japanese language school in Japan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six teachers (three full-time and three part-time). Interview transcripts were analyzed qualitatively using SCAT (Otani, 2019) and a framework proposed by the authors consisting of three orientation types: assessment, open-practice, and reflection- sharing. The result indicates that each teacher has a specific orientation toward classroom observation activities. Nevertheless, they may occasionally show signs of inclination toward a different orientation type at the same time or gradually change their major orientation. Consequently, the current study has significant implications for the importance of designing activities that take into account the role of Japanese language teachers and their relationship with each other.

In recent years, as foreign care workers have increased significantly in Japan, linguistic analysis, educational practice, and teaching materials have been developed, but communication ability has not been sufficiently discussed. This study presents part of the knowledge acquired through fieldwork at a nursing care facility in Japan. The purpose of this research is to explore the communication ability required for foreign care workers using Japanese as a second language in their profession, based on the views of actual staff members who share the workplace with them.

This paper focuses on the results of analysis that may be grouped into three categories based on the data: the ability to share the diversity of the workplace, the ability to have a sense of purpose as a member of the team, and mental ability such as hospitality combined with nonverbal communication ability. The paper goes on to consider these results from the viewpoint of nursing care professionalism and second language communication, and discusses the role of Japanese language education for careers beyond that of care worker.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the Learning Through Discussion Method (hereinafter "LTD") on advanced Japanese learners. LTD comprises the preparation for a reading class and a group meeting of several students. In this research, students in an advanced Japanese learning class answered questionnaires about discussion skills and belief in cooperation at the beginning and end of classes. The results showed improvement in three factors of discussion skills (progression and response to the situation, active contribution and self-assertiveness, and creation of an atmosphere) and two factors of belief in cooperation (individual orientation and inequity). These results indicate that LTD is also effective for improving the discussion and cooperation abilities of advanced Japanese learners. In addition, this study suggests three points requiring attention in the application of the method: the LTD procedure, the indication of the discussion language, and the selection of assignment texts.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the teacherʼs role in Japanese reading courses by presenting a Japanese reading course design, in which learners decide what they read in the course while the teacher supports their reading process, and to analyze what the students learn, and the catalysts for what they are learning. This course asked learners to engage in three interactive dialogues: with themselves, others, and the content of the books themselves. While they did so, learnersʼ relationships with the dialogues were retextured, based on what they learned. From the results of a task sheet description analysis, the researcher found concepts which emerged during the process and as a result of the lessons, and these concepts demonstrated what was unique about the lessons in this course. The following three considerations came from this analysis. First, these concepts were brought about by these dialogues. Secondly, some of these concepts arose because learners chose the books themselves. Finally, asking learners to engage in reflection via task sheets, and having dialogues with peers and their teacher, affects the learning process. Learners who would prefer teacher-directed book assignments may be attracted to a course where they have dialogues with others, which engages them in learning. This paper points out that by choosing what they read for themselves, it is possible for learners to have deep dialogues with the books, and reflect on their beliefs and way of thinking. During the reading process, it is important for teachers to ask learners about the books: what they understand, and what they think about what they have read.

This research studies the impacts that the types of kanji words and learner strategies have on understanding comprehension of Japanese two-character kanji words among Chinese-speaking learners. Through oral-translation questions and follow up interviews divided into unlearned and learned vocabulary, the following results were as follows: 1) the rate of correct answers for unlearned words was SJO > OJO > NJO, whilst that in learned words was SJO > OJO ≈ NJO; 2) learner strategies had three aspects, which were vocabulary, context and integration, furthermore the three functions were confirmation, verification and conjecture; 3) the relationship between learner strategies and types of kanji words was not seen in the case of unlearned words, but was present in the case of learned vocabulary and the relation differed depending on the type of kanji words; 4) In both cases of unlearned and learned words, accuracy rate was affected by the types SJO/OJO/NJO, while the impact of learner strategy functions on accuracy rate was also seen in the case of learned words.