Japanese Language Learning for International Students

2020/04/17

The Center for Japanese Studies provides opportunities for many international students to learn Japanese. While there are students at various levels from beginner to advanced, many who are currently at the beginner level desire to eventually acquire high-level proficiency for use in research or their careers. Furthermore, for them, Japanese is not merely a matter of liberal arts, but an essential tool for living and studying in Japan. Therefore, education is required to simultaneously build a foundation for the future and develop immediate skills that can be used right away.

In the foreign language education reform movement that occurred in Europe in the late 19th century, the traditional grammar-translation method was criticized, and the direct method—which teaches only in the target language without using a vehicular language and emphasizes phonetics—was proposed. While there are many theories following this trend, the one that particularly influenced Japanese language education was the Oral Method by H. E. Palmer, who came to Japan in 1922. In this teaching method, students do not rely on written characters in the early stages of learning; instead, they undergo training to directly link the sounds and concepts of words through the repetition of listening and speaking. Example sentences are presented using pictures and actions within specific contexts, and grammatical explanations are kept to a minimum. For example, even with the first introductory sentence taught, "I am Tanaka," the teacher does not explain the semantic functions of "wa" or "desu." By using a gesture pointing to oneself and a name tag, the teacher has the students guess what is being said and then has them imitate the introduction. From subsequent sentences with the same structure, such as "This is a book" or "That is a classroom," students inductively come to understand that the single structural pattern "...wa...desu" functions to connect the subject and the predicate.

While some say that this way of teaching is inefficient, if a specialized teacher who understands the philosophy and educational techniques of the direct method conducts lessons based on a carefully prepared lesson plan, more time can be devoted to speaking practice instead of spending time on detailed grammatical explanations, making it rather efficient. Additionally, through practice using structural patterns of sentences with various functions, students can master the art of instantly verbalizing their intended expressions by fleshing out the skeleton of a sentence with vocabulary. Flexible young people quickly get used to this method and come to enjoy the practice. After one semester of intensive study, even beginners will have no trouble with basic daily conversation and can move on to learning written language. Listening to the Japanese that is the fruit of international students' daily efforts, and making an effort to speak in Japanese that is easy for them to understand, might also be considered a form of international exchange.