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Paper short abstract:

An attempt of effective use of Japanese modern literature in 4th grade students' lessons of the "St. Klement Ohridski" Sofia university in Bulgaria have been underway.In this attempt, it aims to train intercultural communication ability. "text theory" was also applied in the lessons.

Paper long abstract:

An attempt of effective use of Japanese modern literature in 4th grade students' lessons of the "St. Klement Ohridski" Sofia university in Bulgaria have been underway. The fourth grade class is the final year of undergraduate of Japanese Studies. Many of them who have been enrolled in 2016 - 2017 academic year studied abroad in Japan for for one year and returned to Bulgaria. Students' Japanese acquisition levels are N2 level or N1 level in JLPT. They are expected to accompulish C level of "CEFR" until their graduation.

In the CEFR 's ability description sentence, those that include' literature 'are the C2 level. It means this is top level capability description. Furthermore, in the JF Japanese Education Standard, the B2 level capability description sentence of "Reception" substantially corresponds to keyword of "novels". Thus, as a level it is reasonable for the current 4th graders of the Sophia University.

In handling modern Japanese literary works in classes, what I was more conscious of than a normal reading activity was "understanding of different cultures". In order to cultivate "intercultural communication skills", it acquires the "knowledge" of the target culture. Furthermore, understanding of self culture and "comparison" of the target culture is really necessary, and training of "tolerance" attitude ranges as the final stage(Matsuura · Miyazaki · Fukushima 2012). In the lessons, based on this, the reading comprehension and contents understanding were promoted. At that time, "text theory" was also applied.

Text theory is a position that "keep the vector of analysis closed only for the author", and "can refer to anything as much as era background and all object". It also gives possibility of interpretation "from the framework that the general reader does not adopt about that text" (Ishihara 2009). This is a position giving great degrees of freedom when interpreting literary works by readers with different cultures, and it can be applied to comprehension with the target culture while considering their own culture. For that reason, in class, we proceeded to consider literary works from the standpoint of text theory.

In this presentation, the above attempt will be reported.