Paper short abstract:

The study looks at the risks and challenges of adopting an online-based approach to teaching Japanese, and studies the progress and feedback of students who took a 10-week long online basic course. A lack of interaction was revealed to be the key issue, and we have several suggestions to present.

Paper long abstract:

Recent developments in IT have led to dramatic changes not only in our everyday life, but also in our education, contributing to the establishment of a digital society and a new generation of students with new expectations and demands. We surmise that it is these new online media, rather than the traditional ones, that will influence the way the Japanese language is taught in the future.

In order to study these changes and potential challenges in more detail, we designed a 10-week long online Basic Japanese course that we launched in 2018, as an integrated model for teaching all traditionally taught aspects of Japanese, including phonetics, grammar, character writing, and conversation. The difference between the traditional methods used in class, and those we have to rely on when teaching online, highlighted a number of challenges in designing the course, as well as certain problems that our students had to face.

The online format turned out to be particularly challenging for phonetics, as the traditional way of teaching phonetics presupposes a personal interaction between the teacher and the students. Self-control exercised by students and self-awareness also become more evident with the online format. Interaction with students is limited to a special support forum, which proved to be insufficient. Should we rely solely on the students, or should we consider designing new types of tests and exercises?

The results gathered in the first year led us to conclude that combining grammar and phonetic activities could provide a possible solution, that could contribute to a faster acquisition of pronunciation skills while simultaneously improving the students' grammar literacy.

Finally, we found that the online course needed to be localized, as we also developed a version for English native speakers. Therefore, we had to adapt the way certain aspects of Japanese grammar were explained so as not to limit the accessibility of the course to just Russian speakers. What is more effective for the process of learning a foreign language, to have the process based on the students' native language, or to start thinking differently from the start? Our research has led us to some possible approaches.