Tokiko SERA

Growing interest in “question formulation” activities highlights their role in fostering critical thinking. In Japanese language education, efforts to enhance question-asking abilities are emerging. This study analyzes beginner-level Japanese textbooks to explore how question-formation is taught. Results reveal a higher use of interrogative-based questions, a focus on simple explanatory questions, and the presence of tasks involving higher-order cognitive skills, even at early stages. These findings offer valuable insights for improving Japanese language instruction.

This paper describes a lecture and workshop that were conducted with the aim of introducing Easy Japanese to medical social workers in Tochigi prefecture. The lecture was about foreigners in Tochigi prefecture, what "Easy Japanese" means, and the needs of Easy Japanese. The workshop conducted involved interaction between the participants and foreigners to facilitate communication with each other. Participants held high opinions about both the lecture and the workshop because they were instrumental in helping the participants know the points of communication with foreigners in Japanese and understand what foreigners need.

This paper introduces the workshop "Yasashii Nihongo: Easy Japanese" for nursing students. The medical field is diversifying due to increasing foreigners as clients and non-native Japanese speaking nurses. In order to accommodate this increasing diversity nurses need to adjust their communication skills. The workshop had two sections. The first section was a practical task based group activity where non-native speakers of Japanese acted as clients and native Japanese as nurses. The second section consisted of an exchange and discussion between the non-native speakers and the native Japanese speakers. This opportunity gave the students, who rarely contact foreigners, to increase their awareness of others and develop new ideas of communication.

The paper discusses the effectiveness of joint classes for students of Japanese and English language classes. JSL students evaluated joint classes as a good opportunity for them to improve their language skills. Even for students who have frequent contact with native Japanese speakers, the opportunity to interact through class is desirable. Reducing the quantity of using the target language is not considered a problem. In addition, students who have a plurilingual background impact other students positively. Having native Japanese speakers as listeners motivates JSL students to learn Japanese, but designing activities and topics specifically for joint classes could further improve collaborative learning.

This paper introduces the "NAZE Series" teaching materials for presentation activities. It targets elementary-to intermediate-level Japanese language students in scientific fields. They were developed to help students learn basic presentation skills efficiently. The teacher-developed materials present concrete topics and contents in science and teach students the logical patterns needed for effective scientific presentation. Class observations also demonstrated the effectiveness of this activity as a pre-session stage preparation for developing advanced academic presentation skills.

This report suggests that practicing shadowing in an L2 academic presentation class for learners of Japanese as a second language, is effective in developing learners' listening comprehension and prosodic pronunciation skills. L2 learners of Japanese have more pronunciation problems when reading aloud text as compared with spontaneous conversation. After features of Japanese accent and intonation were introduced and discussed with the aid of a prosody graph, the class began practicing shadowing. It appeared to be effective in 1) raising awareness of prosodic features and their pronunciation, 2) helping learners notice what they could and could not comprehend in listening tasks, 3) developing learner autonomy.

This report suggests that using peer response in an advanced Japanese writing class_for learners of Japanese as a second language, is an effective way to develop leaner autonomy in writing. Writing skills are essential in university; however, it is mentioned in other studies that the papers L2 learners write have problems related to logical structure. Analysis of the data shows 1) areas of difficulty in writing for advanced learners, 2) learners did not notice their problems and 3) peer response helps learners to notice their mistakes and correct them by themselves.