In Japan, an “extreme-aging society” in which adults aged 65 and above accounted for upwards of 21% of the total population in 2010, it will be necessary to secure 2.8 million care workers by 2040, according to estimates by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Hence, in recent years, the reception of care workers from abroad has been greatly accelerated through new systems, such as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA), Care Worker Residence Status, Technical Intern Training, and Specified Skill Workers, as solutions to the shortage of care workers at caregiving facilities that cannot be offset by Japanese people alone.

　This paper summarizes these new systems for the reception of care workers from abroad and examines the background and status of each system. Further, the problems posed by the acceptance of care workers from abroad are considered from the perspectives of the Care Worker National Examination, necessary Japanese language proficiency, and residence status.

　Finally, as a summary, the paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey of nursing care facilities that currently accept care workers from abroad under the aforementioned four systems, considers the issues identified therein, and makes recommendations toward improving the reception of care workers from abroad in Japan in the future.

　The grammatical form -te iru to describe a resultative meaning is considered one of the most difficult for Japanese language learners to acquire. At the same time, there are studies which suggest that the level of difficulty in understanding the -te iru form depends on the corresponding expression in the learnerʼs native language. In this study, we divided the Japanese verbs with -te iru forms that express a resultative meaning into four types—“wallet falls,” “car stops,” “turn the switch on,” and “chair breaks”—from a Japanese-Chinese contrastive perspective. Subsequently, we carried out a fill-in-the-blank picture description task to evaluate the understanding of -te iru as a resultative meaning in each category on 49 native Chinese speakers who were advanced Japanese learners. We observed differences in the degree of difficulty between the types. The forms -ta and aru/iru were found to contrast with -te iru, but the constrasting nuances differed between types. The differences could be explained by the differences in construal between Chinese and Japanese languages and ambiguous input which learners receive. The study is significant as it clarified that the difference in the degree of difficulty in grasping the -te iru form depends on the verb category, and additionally provided an explanation in terms of the influence of the native language and input.

　This study examined the stage of passive voice acquisition, which is considered the S-Procedure in the Japanese developmental stages based on the processability theory, and the influence of the L1. The research method consisted of analyzing learnersʼ longitudinal conversational data (L1 Chinese and Korean, n = 3 for each) and the cross-sectional data of conversational and oral narratives (L1 Chinese, Korean, Turkish, English, and Spanish, n = 50 for each) and conducting a distributional analysis of the passives and B-type conjunctions, which are hypothesized to belong to the S-BAR Procedure. The results showed that passive sentences began to be used later than B-type conjunctions. Thus, the passive voice belongs to the stage of the S-BAR Procedure, rather than the S-Procedure. Furthermore, a Classification and Regression Tree analysis was conducted using the cross-sectional data, and a model was constructed to predict the use of passive sentences by L1 and Japanese language proficiency (SPOT score). The model indicated that the influence of L1 is limited. Passive voice is used in all the L1 groups after the intermediate level. L1 Chinese, Turkish, and English learners are more likely to use the passive than L1 Korean and Spanish learners, but at the advanced level, the passive is used regardless of the L1.

　A hidden curriculum is defined as unorganized norms and values taught (yet not always learned) in classrooms. Using an ethnographic method based on observation and narrative data, I analyzed what hidden curriculum is taught and learned (or not learned) in Hong Kongʼs Japanese language classrooms. Teachers taught the hidden curriculum, which includes greetings, punctuality, aesthetics, politeness, and empathy, under the influence of their lived experiences, beliefs, and contexts. Compared with nativespeaking teachers, non-native-speaking Hong Kong teachers more explicitly taught, as the hidden curriculum, behaviors seen as typical of native Japanese speakers. Those non-native-speaking teachers and Hong Kong learners of Japanese jointly constructed an imagined community of Japan reflecting Hong Kong peopleʼs identities, though their Japan was different from the nation-state of Japan. Further, Hong Kong learners showed high degrees of autonomy, and they displayed overt resistance or indifference when their norms and values came into conflict with the hidden curriculum. Recently, it has become the norm that politically sensitive topics are avoided in classrooms

　In this study, we administered a picture-guided paper-and-pencil test that was developed to assess the productive abilities of four types of case markers, ga, o, ni, and de, to 193 JSL (Japanese as a Second Language) children in the fourth to sixth grades. Most of the JSL children scored above the monolingual norms after five to six years of residence in Japan. However, we also found individual differences as some JSL children scored above the monolingual norms after a much shorter length of residence in Japan. We then closely examined the case markers that proved difficult for the JSL children with less than five years of residence. The children had problems with case markers that were used with verbs that had transitive/intransitive or give/receive contrasts as well as the items that involved scrambled sentences. They also had problems with the non-prototypical use of the case markers such as ga when used with inanimate nouns and o that denoted route. It is worth noting that the JSL children had their own rules even when they made errors and were not using case markers randomly. We discuss the pedagogical implications based on the results of our survey.

　This paper presents the results of a survey on difficulties encountered by learners of the Japanese language and support measures for them. We requested 316 universities with 40 or more international students to participate in the survey and received responses from 105 Japanese language teachers. The survey items included 1) stumbling blocks faced by learners, 2) guidance and response by faculty members, and 3) information or resources needed for better support. Responses were sought to multiple-choice and free-description questions. As for stumbling blocks, difficulties were pointed out in terms of learning (inability to understand the meanings of instructions and questions that should be understandable with the learnersʼ Japanese language ability, difficulties in character recognition and production, etc.) and behavioral aspects (inability to manage time, get organized, or interact with others, etc.). The teachers responded to these difficulties by having the students form pairs and groups; meeting with the students; providing individual guidance; advising on learning methods, strategies, and management methods; and collaborating with other faculty members and departments. In terms of necessary information and resources, guidelines for problem identification, assessment tools, disability characteristics and case studies, places for information sharing and consultation, and specialized knowledge were mentioned.

　The production of collocations using polysemous words is said to be difficult for Japanese language learners to master. We used the International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Language (I-JAS) to analyze which meanings of polysemous verbs that form collocations are used by native Chinese speakers who are learning Japanese (NNSs) and what characteristics are found in collocational nouns. We selected suru ʻdoʼ and aru ʻbeʼ as nodes.

　The analysis showed that, for both of those verbs, NNSs produced more collocations formed in the core meaning than native Japanese speakers (NSs). NNSs produced more collocational nouns for action with suru and for concrete content with aru. Furthermore, NNSs produced fewer abstract and formal nouns than NSs. This suggests that learners at the elementary and intermediate levels tend to acquire limited collocations or avoid collocations formed by derivative and abstract word meanings in the production of their interlanguage.