Hi everyone, 皆さん、こんにちは。                                     

My Japanese classes/lessons included practices to develop skills of speaking/talking, reading, listening, writing, interacting, and constructing/performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups. As for the main textbooks and materials, the Beginner 1 usedTraining Manual and handouts for Hiragana acquisition. From Beginners 2 onwards, Genki Book 1 was used for the main textbook and handouts for vocab., sentence construction and Katakana acquisition.

Also, apart from Japanese magazines (e.g. Jenta, Nichigo Press), Japanese newspapers, The Australian (esp. for news/current affairs on Japan), Daily Telegraph (its travel magazines and pictures of cute animals etc to make sentences/application of grammar in Japanese) were used. At the end of courses of 10 weeks, the students have an exam or open-exam which included features of vocab., grammar, dialogues construction, translation and script.

Regarding Japan and its environment, I informed with use of the reports from NHK TV (SBS 1 and 2) which is broadcasted for 6 days/week, the Australian newspaper and Daily Telegraph. The topics concerned included were the sensational cherry blossoms in Japan, some wage rises in the medium and small sized enterprises in Japan (chuushoo-kigyoo) compared to wages in the past several years, 3% increase of sales tax (GST, shoohizei) begun early this month (and the Government is planning to make an economic rescue package to help business and consumers), North Korea’s two missiles launched to the Japan Sea when the P.M. Abe, US President Obama and the South Korean President were having the leaders’ talk during the G7 Summit in Hague, and the verdict of the International Court of Justice about the Japanese whaling in the Antarctic, Tetsuya Wakuda’s restaurant in Singapore, Waku Ghin which had been graded as No. 7 in S. Pellegrino Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, List 2014 and which costs $350/person for 10 courses (The Daily Telegraph, 30.3.14).