My Japanese lessons includes practices to develop skills of speaking, reading, listening, writing, interacting and constructing and performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups or by oneself. The learning included the language and cultural skills to be used in travelling in Japan and general understanding on Japanese culture. Speaking practice sometimes used the pictures, information, concepts/ideas or topics from the brochures of Japanese newspapers, the ads, Nichigo Press and other Japanese monthly magazine such as Japaralia.

Regarding my class teaching, Group lessons were finished last month and I had only weekly tutorials for two students’ class (a father and his son who is a secondary school student) and a company executive who I have been teaching for 2 years.

For the above, 2 students’ class, we have been using “Training Material” (for teaching Japanese) of SLS. I also taught other useful grammar, vocab, colloquial phrases, phonetics, dialogue constructions etc esp. based on common use in daily life or travel life Japan. Also, traditional or commonly respected value and behavior and other cultural features, transport system, the thick book of the JR Network of Jikokuhyo (timetable of all the railway network) which you will see at every station in Japan and used by the public. As for script, they learned the basic knowledge of Hiragana, its writing and reading to some extent. It was also done through homework with use of worksheets given. In addition, I read and explained Japanese traditional fairy tales.

The earlier mentioned, my another (and very consistent/committed and hardworking tutorial student in Japanese) a company executive, David Bare, who takes a regular advisor’s role for the NSW government for the issues of building industry and regularly writes/speaks for the media, is happy to help any genuine learners of Japanese for info.

Above David has taken the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), N5 earlier this month. He said it had been a very interesting experience and he was happy to have taken the Test. He informed me that he had been surprised to know/see many people had taken the Test on that day. According to the info., even just at the venue of Uni. of NSW on that day, the numbers of people who took the Test were: 98 people in the Test N5, 120 in N4 and N3, 150 in N2 and 97 in N1.  –  That is marvelous and so positive, in my view.  I had heard that in China and Korea, the numbers of the participants in the JLPT are tens of thousands (biggest numbers for overseas Test conducting). But certainly the numbers of candidates in Australia are solidly increasing that will be good for the relation between Japan and Australia (and overseas).

 

When Mr Donald Trump was elected for the US Presidency, on the NHK TV’s news program, virtually every interviewee expressed serious worries about that and the future relations between Japan and the US. However, recently the CEO of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son said to the President-elect Trump that SoftBank will invest approximately $50 billion technology fund in the US that would create 50,000 new jobs.  (http://asia.nikkei.com/Markets/Equities/SoftBank-shares-soar-on-AI-hopes, news on 19 Dec., 16). Trump said “Masa is a great business leader!” and praised the CEO after their meeting (according to the NHK TV news).

 

Toshiko Jackson (Japanese teacher)

25.12.16