This paper examines the support and educational measures necessary to promote the career development of elementary and junior high school children with foreign roots. As more children with foreign roots are residing in Japan for the long term, supporting their career development from an earlier stage and helping them build their careers is essential. However, there are difficulties they encounter as they pursue their careers. This paper first demonstrates that to support their career development, it is necessary to provide resources, including human resources and career information, and an environment that promotes a sense of belonging. Special attention to social justice and life-course perspectives is given. Next, career development is discussed from the following four perspectives: self-development, social relationship building, long-term planning, and social participation. In doing so, current challenges to be addressed are presented. Finally, the role of Japanese language education in promoting their career development is discussed.

　In this paper, we first provide an overview of issues in the academic and career paths of immigrant high school students, as well as efforts by local governments to ensure their career development, and then examine a tripartite collaborative practice at a part-time high school in Tokyo which attempted to create ibasho (spaces of comfort and acceptance) and support studentsʼ career development. From 2015 to 2020, the three authors, a high school teacher, an NPO director and a university faculty member, developed a school club called ONE WORLD (Multilingual Exchange Club), using it as a base for career support. The implementation of this program highlights the importance of creating opportunities for contribution to the community, promoting the collaboration of diverse actors, adopting a strength-based approach, and providing continuous support with a focus on long-term goals. In conclusion, we raise issues and proposals about how to support the career development of immigrant youth who will participate in the building of society.

　In 2021 the Japanese government initiated an accreditation system for international student career development programs, with the aim of increasing the ratio of graduating international students who find employment in Japan from 30% to 50%. The three pillars of this system are: Japanese language education, career education, and internships (MEXT, 2022). Education on careers for international students at universities needs to respond to this initiative, but at the same time, we must bear in mind the diversity among international students, many of whom would not be covered by this system, seek a better understanding of all their needs in relation to the ideals of university education, and work to enhance actual practice.

　This paper provides an overview of the accreditation system, followed by a case study of a university with a diverse population of international students, which presents the potentials and the challenges of career education for international students.

　This paper describes the career development of foreign residents in Japan, based on the case of members of the Indonesian immigrant worker community in the town of Ōarai , Ibaraki Prefecture. Previous studies have pointed out a strong relationship between career development and Japanese language acquisition, not only for foreign employees working for Japanese companies, but also for individuals employed in the Technical Intern Training Program. In the case of the members of the Ōarai community as well, one of the major factors hindering career development in Japan has been the lack of progress in Japanese language acquisition. In fact the author found that most members of the Ōarai Indonesian community are still at the beginning level, as ascertained with the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), but that a few members of the community have reached the intermediate level. After clarifying the process by which they achieved this level, the author suggests how to create an environment that will facilitate this process. The author also mentions the possibility that the Manabi-no-Wa (“Learners' Circle”) activities currently implemented in Ōarai-machi could serve as a venue for career development.

　In a comparison among five Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines), the Philippines has been found to have a limited number of Japanese language majors in higher education, and its Japanese language teacher training programs are underdeveloped. A questionnaire and interview survey of Filipino Japanese language teachers who continue to practice teaching was conducted in this regard. These teachers teach in a variety of institutions and settings, including work-related institutions, language schools, universities, high schools, and private instruction, and many teach in multiple institutions and settings. The Japanese language education they have received varies widely, and their background in Japanese-language teacher training is often short-term and fragmentary. However, many enjoy teaching Japanese and continue to receive teacher training on their own initiative. For Filipino teachers who move back and forth between various Japanese-related fields, it is believed that reflection based on the Trinity Model of Professionalism of Japanese language teachers (Tateoka 2021) is important for their growth. Furthermore, it can be stated that it is important to establish teacher training and development programs in public institutions in order to strengthen Japanese language education and improve the expertise of teachers in the Philippines.

　The present study investigates the lexical inferencing on the unknown subordinate senses of Japanese polysemous verbs by Chinese learners of Japanese, focusing on the effects of L2 proficiency, semantic overlap and contextual richness. The results revealed that: 1) for high-overlap senses in rich context, mid-level and high-level learners achieved a higher degree of inferencing accuracy than low-level learners; for high-overlap senses in less-rich context, half of the unknown words were inferred correctly and mid-level and high-level learners achieved a higher degree of inferencing accuracy than low-level learners; for low-overlap senses in rich context, half of the unknown words were inferred correctly and the effect of L2 proficiency was observed; for low-overlap senses in less-rich context, inferencing was difficult regardless of L2 proficiency. In addition, regardless of L2 proficiency: 2) the degree of inferencing accuracy was higher for high-overlap senses than low-overlap senses; 3) the degree of inferencing accuracy was higher in rich context than less-rich context.

　The ability to construct narratives is essential for good relationships. This paper investigates the differences between the narratives of native Chinese learners of Japanese and native Japanese speakers, focusing on the evaluation strategies that make the narratives understandable and engaging.

　The results suggest the following three possibilities: 1) learnersʼ difficulties in using -te shimau in situations where unexpected events occur may be due to the influence of Japanese language textbooks and teaching; 2) learnersʼ tendency to express their evaluation of the speaker in different ways, using evaluative expressions to add information and evaluative clauses to express opinions, is partly influenced by their native language and culture; 3) the tendency to express mental states such as tanoshii ʻfunʼ throughout their narrative is not influenced by their native language and culture. However, it is a learnerʼ s device to create ups and downs in the second language narrative.

　In previous discourse studies, learner-specific language use has sometimes been treated as an error. However, by using an objective measure of evaluation strategy in this paper, it was possible to consider the influence of the narrative style of their native language and culture.

　In order to analyze the syntactic complexity (SC) of Japanese learnersʼ compositions, this study measured the SC of 150 compositions using both traditional SC measures and dependency distance. The results show: First, among the traditional SC measures adopted, mean length of sentence (MLS), mean length of T-unit (MLT), and dependent clauses per clause (DC/C), are the most effective ones that can accurately reflect the SC of Japanese learners with different proficiency levels. Second, dependency distance can further compensate for any insufficiencies of these three traditional SC measures; compared with MLS and MLT, dependency distance is less affected by lexical factors, while compared with DC/C, dependency distance can better measure the syntactic complexity of sentences without dependent clauses. In short, the use of traditional SC measures combined with dependency distance can represent the development of the SC in Japanese learnersʼ compositions more clearly and comprehensively.

　This paper discusses the format features of Social Networking Services (SNS) and their politeness effects, focusing on invitation discourse in intercultural contexts. This study collected discourse data through role-play using SNS text chat between Japanese native speakers and Malay native speakers. In this study, discourse data were quantitatively analyzed from the perspectives of message-sending format and use of terminal punctuation marks and symbols. In addition, qualitative analysis of the discourse was conducted, focusing on the items that were confirmed in the follow-up interviews to have had a negative effect. The results showed that pragmatic transfer by Malay native speakers was found in the tendency to use “chat format” with the repeated sending of short messages, as well as in the omission of terminal punctuation marks and symbols. However, only a few of these had a negative effect. It seems that the negative effects were not only due to the numerical differences between the message senders and receivers, but that they also occurred in conjunction with other factors such as discourse structure and sentence-splitting.