Paper short abstract:

Outside of Japan, the chance to see Japanese Kanji occurs more often on Internet websites than on paper. This study examines the frequency of 3,000 kanji's on a Japanese website using the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics Web Japanese Corpus.

Paper long abstract:

Outside of Japan, the chance to see Japanese Kanji occurs more often on Internet websites than the paper. But little is known as to which kanji are used most frequently. How does the frequency of kanji between the paper medium and the website differ? In this study the frequency of 3,000 kanji's on a Japanese website are surveyed. NINJAL Web Japanese Corpus: NWJC is used for this research. This was developed by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) in 2017.

A previous study using the Google search engine to examine kanji on Internet websites found two problems (Tokuhiro, 2013). First, there is an upper limit (25,270,000,000) in the number of items searched. Second, the frequency　of the kanji "情報" is greater than "情". This second issue suggests that Google can search for a word but does not search for single characters. The current study uses NWJC because it has no upper limits and can search for a particular character. Results are compared with the frequency of kanji in newspapers and Tokuhiro (2013).

Results show that the most frequent kanji from 1-10 are 日 人 出 大 一 思 今 見 事 分. For newspapers, it is 日 一 国 十 大 会 人 年 二 本. "思"(think) is most characteristic in the best 10 kanji suggesting that this kanji is used when describing opinion, thought or feeling. Kanji used to describe people's thinking is more frequent on websites than newspapers. Kanji representing Chinese numerals' frequency is lower. The 3,000 kanji list on the frequency order is also provided. Learning frequent kanji makes learner easier to read Japanese sentences on websites. This study contributes to Japanese kanji education.

References

Amano, S. & Kondo, T. (2008) NTT Database Series [Nihongo-no Goitokusei: Lexical Properties of Japanese] CD-ROM. Tokyo: Sanseido Co., Ltd.

Tokuhiro, Y. (2013) Research on Japanese Kanji; its Versatility and Occurrence of Frequency. 2013 Autumn Conference on Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language, Proceedings, 230-235.

Paper short abstract:

Present study is to report what we examined to identify specific "language use situations" and "Hiroshima Tourism Can-do List," focusing on activities in Hiroshima, a popular tourist destination in Japan during the course of developing the teaching materials.

Paper long abstract:

As the number of inbound tourists to Japan increases in recent years and Tokyo is hosting the 2020 Olympics, some measures have been taken to accommodate the inbound tourists with little or no Japanese skills, such as creating multilingual and universal public signs and developing convenient applications both for guests and hosts. However, they will still have some contact with Japanese people or with the Japanese language.

Therefore, focusing on the situations where inbound tourists encounter Japanese hosts, we are creating "a tool to assist Japanese language learning." With it, even ultrashort-term tourists "can" learn Japanese language while gaining deeper multicultural understanding through the bilateral communication.

The presentation focuses on 2 aspects of the tool development process: identification of "language use situations" and creation of "Hiroshima Tourism Can-do List." Data collection and research were conducted in Hiroshima, which is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Japan.

First, specific situations were identified where even ultrashort-term inbound tourists have may opportunities to communicate in Japanese in Hiroshima. To identify those, various brochures, guide books and websites were analyzed.

Next, a prototype of "Hiroshima Tourism Can-do List" was attempted created with statements describing what inbound tourists can accomplish with their language skills in above-mentioned situations. In the process of creating it, we refereed to the CEFR, JF Standard, CEFR-J and so on.

Although majority of inbound tourists to Japan are at "Pre-A1 level" of the CEFR-J etc., they still can accomplish some tasks. One of the aims of creating the list is to make the users of these materials be aware of "what they actually could do" by providing them with these "things even Pre-A1 can do" as Can-do List, reflecting them in the content.

For the future project, Tourism Can-do will be evaluated further to verify whether it is practical as actual language activities for foreign students in Japan and Japanese language learners visiting Japan. In addition, after researching and collecting data at tourist spots and analyzing it, we will examine the structure and the substance of the teaching materials including its content.

Paper short abstract:

This study extracted expressions of laughter from a Russian novel and its Japanese translation, and performed a questionnaire for both native speakers to ask who the laughing person is. The result showed that Japanese has more expressions of laughter, related with the laughing person, than Russian.

Paper long abstract:

"Communication" has been regarded as being based on intention of behaviors. Recently, however, some specific speech wordings "Role language" have been reported, which are given to the speakers based on the speaker's sex, age, appearance, personality and image ("characters") regardless intention of the speaker by others, for example authors, translators, and among others. Some studies about "Role language" revealed that Japanese translators use "Role language" such as "Women's language" for standard utterances of Japanese non-native speakers. Further, Japanese has much more kinds of "Role language" than other languages, and a relation between "Role language" and the speakers' "characters" is stronger in Japanese than in other languages. Are these phenomena observed only in speech-act? How about in other behavior such as laughter?

This study tried to prove that Japanese has much more kinds of specific expressions which describe various ways of laughter than Russian language, and a relation between the expression and the laughing person's "character" is stronger in Japanese than in Russian language. This study extracted expressions of laughter such as "takawarai suru (to laugh loudly)", "gera-gera warau (to guffaw)" from a famous Russian novel "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky and its Japanese translation version. Furthermore, then a questionnaire survey for Japanese and Russian native speakers was performed to ask who the appropriate person is for each expressions of laughter. As the result, the following things are revealed; Some Russian expressions of laughter are translated much more kinds of expressions in Japanese translation version depending on the laughing persons' "characters"; many Russian native speakers answered that they do not care who the laughing person is, but anyone can laugh by several ways depending on situation; on the other hand, many Japanese native speakers chose the appropriate person for each expression of laughter.This result suggest a possibility that Russian students of Japanese regard the expressions of laughter which are connected with specific "characters" as unmarked ones, and unintentionally use them, without education about them.

Paper short abstract:

This study clarifies the influencing factors faced by advanced learners of the Japanese language when emailing. We conducted tests with Chinese, Koreans and Japanese university students. As results, the social distance, burden for the sender, and influence of native cultures were clarified.

Paper long abstract:

In accordance with the development of information technology, e-mailing spread rapidly and now plays an important role in all aspects of our daily lives. Verbal behaviors such as requests, refuse, apologies or thanks that were originally carried out face-to-face are increasingly being carried out by e-mail. However, e-mail writing in a foreign language is not only about the operational capabilities of the language, it is also necessary to have an understanding and ability to adapt to the target culture, and an overall ability to use information media, thus it is not an easy task for foreign language learners. Similarly in Japanese education, there is a need for explicit instructions on email writing, but the collected data and research on the subject is still not enough.

The aim of this research is to clarify the influencing factors and problems faced by learners of the Japanese language for the acquisition of email writing skills. Targeting advanced learners of the Japanese language (JLPT N2, J-CAT 250points or above), I made considerations through comparison with native Japanese speakers on the characteristics and problems of the strategies used in request emails.

Using the online test system we developed, and focusing on university students in Japan, China, and South Korea; we took groups of 30 people each composed of Chinese learners, Korean learners and Japanese native speakers, asked them to write 6 request emails, then conducted a follow-up interview.

Based on the data, ① the social distance between the email receiver, ② the burden of the mail for the sender, and ③ how their native culture influences the use of the strategies in the request emails were clarified. Through this research, new insights concerning the way of teaching email writing skills in Japanese education were obtained.

Paper short abstract:

This study focuses on developing teaching materials for improving response in Q&A sessions of presentations for learners of Japanese. These materials consist of four stages: 1. Mental preparation, 2. Understanding questions, 3. Answering questions, and 4. Showing consideration for the audience.

Paper long abstract:

This study focuses on question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions, an area that which has been inadequately covered in presentation teaching materials for international students leaning Japanese. This involves exploring ways of learning and developing new teaching materials to promote a more active discussion between students and their audience.

Since one of the aims of presentations by students is to improve their study through feedback from the audience, Q&A session hold a highly crucial role; however, currently, Q&A sessions do not receive much attention in Japanese language learning. As a result, many students feel regret for not being able to respond satisfactorily in Q&A sessions. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to increase students' knowledge of how Q&A sessions operate and to conduct practice Q&A sessions with students. These teaching materials consist of four different stages of learning: 1. Mental preparation, 2. How to properly understand questions, 3. How to answer questions, and 4. How to show consideration for the audience during Q&A sessions.

In the first stage, students are tasked with thinking about the aims and intentions of presenters and audiences. In the second stage, students learn the general frame and structure of Q&A sessions. If a presenter cannot properly understand the meaning of a question, he or she cannot answer appropriately. Therefore, in this stage, students learn commonly used Japanese expressions in Q&A sessions to better equip them for answering their audience.　In the third stage, students are taught ways of answering questions under a time limit and ways of responding in various scenarios, such as in cases in which they do not understand the Japanese in the question or they understand the Japanese but do not understand the questioner's intentions.　In the final stage, students discuss how to react when asked questions involving inaccurate facts or misconceptions and learn that there is not always only one correct answer.

In two trial courses, in which the students studied this material for the first time, the students' reaction was that the contents of the course are useful for improving international students' presentation skills.

Paper short abstract:

I extracted adverbs for Japanese reading materials and analyze the relationship with the context of sentences. I tested learners by creating questions. - Modal adverbs appear in places that act as hints in sentences. Learners who understood the effects of them understood the thinking of the writer.

Paper long abstract:

Modal adverbs are used in places that reflect the intention of the writer and are key points for Japanese reading comprehension. Knowledge and understanding about modal adverbs are considered necessary for correctly reading the context of sentences and grasping the themes. However, in reading comprehension instruction in Japanese language education, modal adverbs are treated as words to supplement parts of sentences, and when adverbs are explained as new words in Japanese textbooks, only usage at the short sentence level is introduced. And usually, reading activity uses a lot of time for studying some another grammar and keywords. By analyzing the modern adverbs of "authenticity determination" and "degree," I found that certain modal adverbs are words that possess a role in relation to the context of the sentence. In addition to these kinds, it is necessary to understand how other modern adverbs are expressed as well. In this research presentation, I shall extract modal adverbs for intermediate level reading materials and analyze the relationship with the context of sentences. The analysis frame was constructed by comparing modal adverbs of Minoru NAKAU - "authenticity determination"/"value determination" and so on, and Yasushi SUGIMURA - "possibility of realization"/"evaluation of the situation" and so on. Next, the modal adverbs in the sentences were classified and the relationships with the context were described. Furthermore, in order to investigate the relationship between the understanding of modal adverbs of Japanese learners and reading comprehension, I tested learners by creating questions that predicted the meaning modified by modal adverbs. The results confirmed that modal adverbs appear in places that act as hints to the subjects in sentences and produce irony and humor. Moreover, it was revealed that learners who understood the effects of modal adverbs not only correctly understood the sentences from the viewpoint of grammar, but also understood the thinking of the writer. These results indicate that teaching the function of adverbs correctly, enables high quality reading classes. Based on this result, I would like to examine novel methods for reading comprehension instruction in the future.

Paper short abstract:

This study examines "interactive classes" with Japanese and Non-Japanese students, analyzing how they build conversations in terms of conversation management. Differences by proficiency level between basic and intermediate levels were examined, focusing on "being able to advance short conversations"

Paper long abstract:

Conversations follow two patterns; there is either a goal or there is no goal. "Functional conversations," such as requests, refusals and promises all have goals, but light interactive conversations between friends generally lack clear goals. In Japanese conversation classes, students usually talk about familiar issues or personal experiences, and have simple discussions. These conversations lack clear goals; however, this does not mean that such conversations are unnecessary. These interactions are important for learners to build interpersonal relationships.

Satsuno and Tsujimura (2006) reported that foreign students studying at universities required three abilities in Japanese; 1) the ability to use Japanese for basic everyday life, 2) the ability to employ Japanese to enrich interpersonal relationships, and 3) the specific ability to fulfill the student commitments of Japanese university students. 2) is a necessary requirement for building a human network in the university environment, so conversation education is important to this end. Nevertheless, Japanese language education syllabuses have not given this much import.

Therefore, this study is based on "interactive classes" in which Japanese native speaker students (NS) voluntarily took part in lessons with Japanese non-native speaker students (NNS). I analyzed how the NS and NNS groups built their conversations from the standpoint of conversation adjustment and management using classroom transcription data. During the study, I also compared and contrasted the basic level class with the intermediate level class, on the same topics, and examined how the conversation construction process differed by proficiency level, along with what accounted for the differences.

As a result, it was discovered that many basic level learners used adjacency pair conversions with simple "questions and answers." On the other hand, many of the intermediate learners used a variety of conversation strategies. For example, it was observed that upon coming across an incomprehensible item, more than one NNS took a turn interacting with an NS and steering the conversation so that the whole group could understand. The preliminary research results in this paper and the very idea of teaching basic and intermediate students strategies for "being able to advance short conversations" were both derived from these observations.

Paper short abstract:

This poster presentation reports on a Japanese language class based on CBI that aimed to raise students' awareness of vulnerable people and issues behind the disaster. It is important to consider how to develop students' such attitudes in Japanese classes not only in Japan, but also in Europe.

Paper long abstract:

The word "intolerance" has become common over the past several years in Japan. There are concerns over the growing insularity of many countries around the world. However, attitudes of indifference and a lack of understanding build emotional walls between people and can lead to hate speech and tension. However, if we can understand vulnerable people and see from their perspective, we can build good relationships with different people and live together with respect for human diversity. Education can contribute greatly to this. Moreover, it is possible to improve language ability, foster understanding of vulnerable people, and see from other people's perspectives at the same time in Japanese language classes. This poster presentation thus reports on a Japanese class aimed to develop such attitudes based on content-based instruction (CBI). The Japanese class that this presentation reports on was for advanced learners, consisted of 11 learners from Korea, China and New Zealand. The major targets were undergraduate students, and the theme of the class was the Great East Japan Earthquake. The class aimed to improve the learners' Japanese language abilities through reading articles and books, watching videos, having discussions, and making presentations on the subject. The class also aimed to raise the students' awareness of issues by understanding the perspective of the affected people. The students were also allowed to make presentations and write reports about the problems in their own countries. This poster presentation details the changes observed in the students throughout the course through their writing and seeks the meaning of the practice of the class. It is important to consider how to develop students' abilities to understand vulnerable people and to see from their perspectives through Japanese classes to live together with respect for human diversity, not only in Japanese-language classes in Japan, but also in Japanese-language classes in Europe.

Paper short abstract:

Our paper uses the example of a child who has been learning Japanese as a heritage language at our school for 3 years. It will demonstrate language development in a global context through interviews with the child and its parents and lead to discussion about the role of the classroom.

Paper long abstract:

We have now been organizing classes for learners of Japanese as a heritage language for three years. We wanted to avoid assessing the divers and rich languages young people learning Japanese as a heritage language have, according to standardized criteria. That is one of the reasons why we started our own classes. Though we have been putting our teaching philosophy into practice, sometimes, we have had some misgivings about "progress" that cannot be clearly seen. Does the classroom change something for children? How should we understand their linguistic development? Do we contribute to their learning? To answer these questions, we would like to look back over our last three years of teaching and rethink the role of the classroom.

Our case study is based on a 10-year-old boy who has been learning Japanese as a heritage language once a week for 3 years. Our objective is to demonstrate and analyze the child's development in various contexts so as to explain the role of the classroom and also reassess the child's linguistic progress by focusing on his personal development. We will be interviewing Simon (pseudonyme) and his parents about life at school and at home, about learning Japanese and about friendships. Depending on our results, we will try to interpret the significance of the classroom for the child.

Contrary to our teaching philosophy, this case study will remind us that we judge the linguistic competence of children according to the standardized criteria we have and that we do not pay attention to other factors. However, if we change our point of view, what is not immediately visible can become visible. It is not because we cannot see something that it is absent. We hope to rethink the role of the classroom. Our paper will also lead to discussion about the assessment that teachers usually make in the classroom of a child's linguistic competence.

Paper short abstract:

This research aims to analyze logical structures and conjunctions found in the statement-making task by Japanese native speakers and English-speaking leaners of Japanese. It was found that native speakers often used "~kedo" and "~ga" whereas learners mainly used "demo" for counterarguments.

Paper long abstract:

Along with the announcement of " 300,000 Foreign Students Plan" by Japanese government in 2008, the number of international students coming to Japanese universities and other higher education institutions has been increasing. Accordingly, those international students are required to make a presentation, participate in discussions in academic situations more often than before. For advanced language learners, those are some of the important academic skills as well as combining and linking sentences into a coherent discourse or a paragraph (ACTFL, 2012). Muramatsu(1997), however, argues that it is difficult for intermediate/advanced language learners to make a coherent discourse or a paragraph. Ishizuka & Narita(2004) point out that the factor effecting the difficulty is the logical structure differences between learners' first language and the target language. Kondo(2004) also points out the differences of how the conjunctions are used in two languages as the factor effecting the difficulty. With that said, it is obvious that the factor has not yet been sufficiently investigated and requires further research.

This research aims to analyze logical structures and contradictory conjunctions in counterarguments found in the statement-making task by 23 English-speaking learners of Japanese and 33 Japanese native speakers. The participants were all graduate/undergraduate students.

The result showed that the logical structures found in advanced learners and Japanese native speakers were similar among participants whereas the use of contradictory conjunctions was different; Japanese native speakers often used "~kedo" or "~ga" as the conjunctions for their counterarguments, while on the other hand learners frequently used "demo" to make counterarguments. This is a distinctive feature found mostly in intermediate learners.

Paper short abstract:

Through investigating spontaneous and read speech, we show that the disfluent speech by Japanese native speakers has regularities, and that studying it would enable Japanese language learners to replace the disfluent quality of their own speech with a natural disfluency like that of native speakers.

Paper long abstract:

In Europe, which is geographically distant from Japan, Japanese learners don't have many opportunities to be exposed to spoken Japanese. In order to teach them spoken Japanese efficiently, we firstly need to know its regularities. In this presentation we shed light on regularities in Japanese native speakers' speech from viewpoint of disfluency by using two kinds of corpus.

The first kind is "My Funny Talk" corpus, a corpus of more or less spontaneous Japanese speech. It has been constructed by the authors since 2010, and now it includes about 200 native speakers' speech and 130 non-native speakers' speech. Another kind is a corpus of 25 Japanese-learners' speech we collected at Ankara University in 2016. It consists of read speech of a transcription of a native speaker's disfluent speech. By using these two corpora, we argue the following three points.

Firstly, the speech of native speakers basically is disfluent, with fluent speech like that of a professional announcer being the exception rather than the rule. This agrees with the understanding of recent research on description language.

Secondly, while the speech of learners also is disfluent, it differs essentially from the disfluency of the speech of native speakers. The disfluent speech by native speakers has its own regularities, while that of learners does not.

And thirdly, except when particularly excited native speakers tend to speak piecemeal in units of syntagma (bunsetsu in Japanese), and when doing so, a particular jumping intonation (e.g., "Sore de desu nee": LHHLLHL) often is observed. In contrast, many learners seem to be aiming for the goal of speaking fluently like a newscaster—something difficult even for native speakers to do—and as a result the flow of their speech tends to be interrupted here and there. It is likely that studying the systematic nature of disfluent speech by native speakers would enable Japanese language learners to replacing the disfluent quality of their own speech with a natural disfluency like that of native speakers rather than eliminating it.

Paper short abstract:

This study aims to determine the effectiveness of teaching materials based on the Usage-based Model and peer learning theory in Moscow's workshop for teachers. I suggest what tasks help children participate actively in learning and how tasks can be prepared, as well as key points to remember.

Paper long abstract:

In this research, I report on a workshop for Japanese teachers conducted in Moscow and study the effectiveness of the materials and teaching method based on the Usage-based model from observations and questionnaire.

Since 1997, Japanese has been introduced as the second language in elementary and secondary education in Russia. However, as the curriculum and the teaching materials have not been well-organized, teachers are currently using materials created for adults or materials published in other foreign languages. Teachers report that it is difficult to maintain student motivation for learning because there are not enough materials for learning activities. They also report a lack of support from their schools. Such problems are not limited to Russia, but are seen elsewhere in Europe as well.

In recent years, the Usage-based Model is advocated as an English acquisition theory (Langacker 2000, Tomasello 2003). It is indicated that language is acquired through real world experiences and acquisition begins by mapping unanalyzed expression and context which has pragmatic meaning. Regarding Japanese acquisition, Hashimoto (2006, 2011) has shown the validity of using the Usage-based Model. The basic concept of the Usage-based Model can be applied to creating teaching materials and formulating a method of teaching Japanese for children.

This workshop consisted of two sections; 1) a lecture explaining the basic concept and language acquisition process of the Usage-based Model and the peer learning theory (Ikeda 2004), 2) preparation of and experiencing the teaching materials (tasks) using pictures, games, etc. from the perspective of context-consciousness.

From the results of the questionnaire, it is shown that the workshop participants have reviewed their own activities in perspective of the Usage-based Model. The validity of applying the Usage-based Model thinking in making teaching materials and teaching children Japanese is also revealed. Through this research, I suggest what tasks induce children to participate actively in learning, how creative activities help develop their thinking, how such tasks can be prepared, and what teachers need to pay attention to in making teaching materials.

Paper short abstract:

The usage database of function words in Japanese HAGOROMO was released in 2015, aiming to support Japanese language teachers and autonomous learners.  In order to show clearly the function of the direction word in a sentence, we will add information of grammatical function of each item.

Paper long abstract:

We have been building an online database named HAGOROMO and released it from 2015. It contains more than 1800 grammatical elements with the meaning, the levels, typical examples and authentic example sentences extracted from corpora of spoken language and written language. The online database HAGOROMO is helpful for the non-native teachers or intermediate and advanced students working and studying overseas to find examples, to understand the usages of grammatical elements.

We are now adding information of grammatical function on it. As when a student wants to write an essay or a teacher of Japanese wants to make tests, the information of grammatical function will help a lot.

Since the purpose of this database is to show how a grammatical element acts, we used the name of grammatical function of each word or phrase like below; "sentence pattern", "honorific(Keigo) ", "part of speech", "inflection" and "idiomatic expression".

"Sentence pattern" is (1) made up of two or more separated elements, but does not mean just a combination of the meanings of the words that make up the expression (eg. ~tara~ta means to find an unexpected thing) (2) composed of a combination of words of different parts of speech, and (3)does not inflect. As "honorific" covers not only honorific words but also sentence structure, we made a category "honorific". As at the beginner level there are stages of teaching inflection itself of inflected words, we set up a category called "inflection" and show inflecting forms handled in elementary textbooks.

When we think about grammatical function of grammatical elements, we counted the unit of a "word" flexible. We did not put it on not only to one word but also gave it to compound words. When a combination of two or more words fulfill a grammatical function equivalent to a word, we considered those words as belonging to the same grammatical category as the original word, and annotated the same grammatical function

By providing information of grammatical function in this way, it becomes easy for teachers or students to choose alternative words.

Paper short abstract:

This paper reports multimodal analysis results of 9 web lectures. Features such as non-linguistic or para-language cues were observed corresponding to the places where meta-language has a "stress" or "topic" function, leading to an understanding of a lecture.

Paper long abstract:

The number of foreign students in Japan exceeded 200,000 in 2014, and international students from Europe also increased significantly from 6,370 in 2014 to 7,268 in 2015 (JASSO 2016). However, it is often said that Japanese lectures cannot be sufficiently understood, and training students to understand lectures before studying abroad in Japan is an urgent issue.

To understand lectures, it is not only necessary to have language ability, but also the ability to understand linguistic cues, non-linguistic cues and para-lingual cues (Mohri 2014, Mohri et al. 2016a). Especially, linguistic cue meta-language expressions are involved in a lecture discourse and presentation of important information, and are known to provide important "clues" for understanding the lecture (Nakai and Toramaru 2010, Mohri et al. 2016b). In addition, with regard to non-verbal information given by lecturers, its relevance to lecture understanding was pointed out (Szatrowski 2010). However, no research has yet been reported on comprehensive analysis of the lecture's "language information", "non-verbal information" and "paralinguistic information".

Therefore, in this research, we conducted a survey using a multimodal analysis method covering all elements related to transmission of information. The procedures were as follows:

1) From about 4000 web lectures of universities all over Japan, we extracted 9 typical web lectures (about 120 minutes in total) as case studies, and

2) We annotated where meta-language is used in a lecture discourse, and carried out labeling of non-verbal behavior and paralinguistic behavior. As a result of this analysis, at places where meta-language has a "stress" function, features such as the lecturer's "pose", "line of sight to a recording video (imaginary viewer)", "change of voice quality (loudness/pitch) and speed", and "moving of hands in front and swinging them up and down", were observed just before those places. In addition, at places where it had a "topic" function, features such as non-linguistic cues and para-lingual cues like gaze and hand movements were observed, leading to an understanding of a lecture.

Paper short abstract:

The objective of this presentation is to examine the meaning of "can-do" based learning approach and to discuss the possibility to realize it in the language classroom for adult learners at B1 level, based on the findings through lessons conducted by the presenter.

Paper long abstract:

The objective of this presentation is to examine the meaning of "can-do" based learning approach and to discuss the possibility to realize it in the language classroom.

The presenter is one of the writers of Japanese language textbook MARUGOTO Intermediate (B1 level), developed based on JF standard for Japanese Language Education, for mainly adult learners abroad. The aim of this book is for learners to be able to communicate at B1 level in Japanese, increase what learners can do in communicative situations where Japanese is used, rather than acquiring language knowledge about grammar and sentence patterns.

For this reason, learning objectives should be given in the forms of specific can-dos. In lessons and courses, authenticity of text, situations and tasks should be highly important. Learners are required to deal with a variety of situations where they might come into contact in everyday life. Acquiring language knowledge is not in itself a learning objectives. Learners study what they need, connected to concrete contexts and situations, in order to attain the can-dos. At intermediate level, there is still a limit to the amount of Japanese they can understand and use. So they need to learn how to apply various strategies for effectively using a limited range of language to achieve their communication goal. It is also important to increase their notice and monitor skills needed for independent learners. Furthermore learning activities should not just finish in the classroom, it is significant to introduce ideas for actually using the Japanese in real-life communication outside the classroom.

The presenter conducted several lessons using listening parts of this textbook. Through these lessons, there are lots of findings such as how to contextualize tasks according learners different interests, how to maximize strategic competence just with limited classroom activities, how to have them to notify the importance of notice and monitor skills in listening tasks, also how to increase language knowledge beside communicative competence.

In this presentation, the learning designs leading to communication goal would be reviewed from the teacher side. In addition, with the finding and experiences as a teacher, future possibilities should be discussed.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on how to meet adult learners' needs in general Japanese courses in private schools. They usually study Japanese as a hobby and hope to develop communication skills. What course design and classroom activities suitable for them? A case in Poland will be presented.

Paper long abstract:

Japanese Language School was established in 1994 by The Museum of Japanese Art and Technology Manggha in Krakow, Poland. At the beginning the majority of participants of Japanese language courses consisted of high school and college students, but currently working adults cover more than half of the enrolled. Those students dedicate their free time to study Japanese after work on midweek days or on Saturdays, yet none of them does it strictly because of the professional reasons. So what are their motivations and expectations? What significance does it have for them to study such language as Japanese? And how does it influence language course design, classroom activities and our work as Japanese teachers?

Based on the results of individual interviews conducted with students we learnt that in most cases studying Japanese was a consequence of the already existing interest in Japan and Japanese culture. We also learnt that great majority of the students wish to develop mostly their communication skills and speaking abilities.

This presentation provides both the detailed information on the results of the survey, as well as the examples of the course and lesson planning with special focus on:

1. Course design based on "Can-do" statements on respective levels

2. Writing and speaking "Can-do" assessment tests in practice

3. Classroom activities allowing students to use Japanese