My Japanese classes/lessons included practices to develop skills of speaking, reading, listening, writing, interacting, and constructing/performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups or by oneself and learning Japanese used in travelling in Japan. Speaking practice sometimes used the pictures, concepts or topics from the brochures of the Japan National Tourism Organizations, Jenta, Nichigo Press, Daily Telegraph etc. Also, understanding and analyzing Japanese culture are important part of the course.

My Intermediate 3 is studying with Japanese for Busy People Book 2 (currently the middle of Unit 2). Also, I give handouts to increase vocab and simple sentences with use of the vocab for practical language learning for travelling or staying in Japan with use of other relevant books. Their Japanese linguistic level is improving progressively, so it is exciting to see that. For example, in discourse writing for homework, such as dialogue with a particular situation for travellers (the situation was at a restaurant and the dialogue was to start with a courteous waitress’ customer service phrases that were from the handout we had gone through in class), the students wrote their own impressive and distinctive dialogues and read them out in class. That was delightful.

As for my students for weekly tutorials, they have been studying and exploring the learning with their deep interest and creativity. So, teaching them is very fun too! One of them, who is a company executive, wishes to take a 2 weeks’ Japanese course in Tokyo a few months later and he is very excited about that plan too. For his lessons, we use Japanese for Everyone (currently, its Unit 2). He enjoys using that book as the main book for the tutorial lessons. Just as the above Intermediate 3, I give and use materials of other books, esp. ones for travel or life in Japan based reference books for practical language teaching.

Another tutorial student too, she is studying very actively and keenly. With her preference, we use Genki Book 1 (currently, its Unit 3) for the main textbook. As the above teaching, I give other reference materials for increase of vocab (with simple sentences making by applying such vocab) and other sentence making exercises for creative and realistic language learning and Japanese language usage.

to 2 students separately; both are in the stage of Beginners 2. One (a company executive in the major industry) began using Japanese for Everyone (with my recommendation) since its main topic is not university student’s life but working people (non-Japanese speakers) and the book is excellent in vocab, grammar, discourse/dialogue teaching, script teaching, interesting/stimulating presentations of exercises and beautiful pronunciation of the speakers. Only and major weakness of that book is that it was published many years ago. I try to use and increase teaching more of the language used in travelling in Japan and non-Japanese people’s life in Japan plus plain forms of verbs etc as the supplementary teaching so that the teaching will be practical and more useful.

As for culture etc and news reported from Japan in the recent month and weeks, I spoke about the following in lessons. Most of the information is from NHK TV News (shown on SBS TV).

Regarding the voting rights, until the recent time, the age that people can vote for elections was 20 years old. However, recently, through the Diet, it legally became 18 years old (just like many other advanced countries).

Japanese share market price was continuously improving and about 2 weeks ago, it reached the level of the one 18.5 years ago. Similarly, the prices of land esp. Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya as the main examples. The highest one is 14%  higher than before.

Japan has been absolutely excited with the brilliant performance of its female soccer team Nadeshiko, in the World Soccer, week after week. The delegate of one of the other countries that played with Nadeshiko and lost against the latter said something like the following. Nadeshiko team, its girls are shorter than his/her team players, but Nadeshiko’s athletes have many more skills and their own strategies to use during the match. –  That comment reminded me of Japanese car manufacuters!

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

5.7.15