Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
has 2 downloads
2
- Format:
- Poster
- Location:
- Lokaal 1.16
- Sessions:
- Saturday 19 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 19 August, 2023, -
Flow from Creating Ideas to Decision Making in Group Activities - The Role of Teachers as Facilitators
Yuka Kawakami
(Aichi University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation is a practical report of a student-participation and student-centered classes in which 6 Japanese students and 3 international students decided on themes and contents in a total of 15 sessions in 2022, conducted research activities, and then created and transmitted the mediums.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation is a practical report of a student-participation and student-centered classes in which 6 Japanese students and 3 undergraduate international students decided on themes and contents in a total of 15 sessions in 2022, conducted research activities, and then created and transmitted the mediums.
The purpose of the classes is to deepen the understanding of cross-cultural communication through the planning and management of activities aimed at multicultural coexistence within and outside the school, to acquire the skills necessary to transmit the attractiveness of the community, to respect others, and to realize and develop others' and one's own abilities while fulfilling their roles.
In this presentation, I take up the scene of the planning meeting and describe the content of what was said by whom, as well as what I observed from the descriptions of exchanges in the process from the creation of multiple ideas to the decision of the specific content. I also consider the role of teachers as facilitators in decision making.
The data consisted of recordings (about 60 minutes) of the discussions held by the 3 groups at the time of the decision of the plan content and verbatim transcripts of the recordings, which described the flow of speech, and were observed and analyzed. In the course of discussions, it was observed that the teacher's statements and intentions influenced their decision making. This may be because the teacher is trying to fulfill the role of facilitator, which is “to facilitate people's activities and steer them to get things done.” In terms of decision making within each group, although they did not decide in advance, it was observed that the students with leadership roles collected and organized their opinions.
Facilitation requires four skills: situation design, interpersonal relations, structuring, and consensus building. However, through observation of the data and this practice, in addition to the above four skills, I believe that it is necessary to cultivate an attitude to keep a distance enough to keep the soup warm, and an attitude of not giving up and not being afraid of failure, both with respect to students and teachers.
Issues Concerning "Essential Educational Content" in Japanese Language Teachers’ Training: Based on Cases of Training Programs for Teachers of Their Own Languages in the UK and France
Toshiko Hosaka
(Nihon University)
Yuko Fujimitsu
(The Japan Foundation, Manila)
Megumi Shimada
(Nihon University)
Hiroko Yabe
Miho Tokimoto
(Sapienza University of Rome)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation explores issues in the "essential educational content (50 items)" that will be a requirement for the newly planned national certification of Japanese language teachers by comparing it with teacher training programs in their own languages in the UK and France.
Paper long abstract:
Currently, Japan is in the process of establishing a national qualification for Japanese language teachers. Under this system, the conditions for obtaining the qualification will include attending training courses and passing examinations that include the 'essential educational content (50 items)' during the training as indicated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ (2019) 'On the state of development and training of Japanese language teaching personnel (report) revised version'. Therefore, universities and other Japanese language teacher training institutions are now required to cover the 'essential educational content'. The development of new standardised educational content for becoming a Japanese language teacher is of great significance for ensuring the quality of teachers and educational institutions. However, from the perspective of training teachers in their own language, how can the 'essential educational content' in Japan be positioned? In this study, cases of teacher training programmes in their own language at universities in the UK and France were investigated, the educational content was comparatively analysed, and issues in the 'essential educational content' were explored.
First, interviews were conducted at University A in the UK (one course) and at Graduate School B in France (two courses) to clarify the characteristics and educational content of each course. Next, the educational content of the three programmes was analysed in comparison with the 'essential educational content', and issues surrounding the 'essential educational content' were examined.
All three programmes were organised with a separate specific purpose, such as 'TESOL and Japanese', 'Educational Technology', and 'Education in English-speaking countries'. Only four items were included in all three programmes from the 'essential educational content'. In contrast, 7-13 items were excluded from the 50 items, indicating the uniqueness of each programme. Considering these three courses, 'essential educational content' is broader in scope; thus, it is difficult for each institution to show its uniqueness. Although the 'essential educational content' is highly necessary for the training of Japanese language teachers in Japan, it would be undeniably difficult for individual institutions to demonstrate their originality if covering this content becomes a requirement.
Paper short abstract:
Authors developed a new online platform for intermediate and advanced level of Japanese language learners to improve their presentation skills. It provides guidance for a well-structured presentation draft. It includes typical framework, structures, and sentence patterns for each topic.
Paper long abstract:
Presentations and speeches that encourage autonomous learning among students are commonly addressed in class, but providing individual guidance during class can be difficult. Therefore, presentations are a challenging task for many students. With proper guidance and support, learners can develop their presentation skills and gain confidence in expressing their ideas. The website the presenters developed aims to provide such guidance and support to intermediate and advanced Japanese language learners.
Our research involved a corpus analysis of approximately 50 presentations delivered by both Japanese learners and native speakers. We identified typical sentence patterns in the introduction and conclusion sections, as well as typical structures in the main body for each topic. The website presents this information and enables learners to first construct a framework for their presentation, and then add specific content, thereby enabling them to produce a well-structured presentation draft independently.
Topics on the website include such as introducing a region, how to cook a dish, favorite books, and social issues. For example, the suggested structure for "social issues" topic includes an introduction section comprising "greetings, introduction of the topic, addressing the audience, giving reasons, and explaining the flow of the presentation," a main body consisting of "transition of topics, background of the problem, presentation, explanation and comparison of data, reasons and opinions," and a concluding section consisting of "summary, appeal to the audience, and greetings." The website also provides typical sentence patterns for each structure. For instance, expressions such as "Have you ever heard of/about ?" or "Have you ever thought about ?" are presented for addressing the audience, and learners can use these patterns and insert their own content in the brackets to create their manuscript.
Furthermore, the website also includes a feature that converts written Sino-Japanese words into spoken language, providing learners with appropriate expressions for their presentations.
In conclusion, the website we developed provides valuable guidance and support for intermediate and advanced Japanese learners seeking to improve their presentation skills. By adhering to the suggested structures and sentence patterns, learners can create well-organized and coherent presentations that effectively convey their ideas to their audience.
Paper short abstract:
This study explores whether there are gender differences in storytelling among native Japanese speakers from a sociolinguistic perspective. Differences in the patterns of narratives between men and women have been examined using the data on 50 native speakers of Japanese from “I-JAS”.
Paper long abstract:
This study explores whether there are gender differences in storytelling among native Japanese speakers from a sociolinguistic perspective. According to Tannen (1992), men tend to speak more frequently and for longer periods of time than women who are generally perceived as more talkative. Men and women also seem to have different speaking styles, which Tannen (1990) has referred to as “report talk” versus “rapport talk”; men are more likely to engage in information-oriented “report talk”, while women, who value more emotional connections, tend to engage in “rapport talk”. In fact, as Makino (1996) has demonstrated, such gender differences appear not only in the spoken language but also in the written language. In his “Cinderella experiment”, Makino (1996) gave participants an example of a Cinderella story written by a man. Participants were then asked to judge whether the writer was a man or a woman. As a result, 80% of the participants correctly answered "man". This correct answer rate was not by chance. As Makino (1996: 127) has concluded, "they guessed the writer's gender based on some clue". The question then arises as to whether gender differences can also be found in storytelling. This research uses data on 50 native speakers of Japanese from the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics' “International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Languages: I-JAS”. The result shows that 1) there was no gender difference in the length of narratives, 2) more than 70% of the fillers that appeared in the narratives were "eh," which was especially common among men, 3) a prologue at the beginning of narratives and a listener-oriented tendency in speech were only observed in women, and 4) men mostly talked about what they could actually see, whereas women were more likely to talk about sympathetic content.
[References]
Makino, S. (1996) Uchi to soto no gengobunkagaku. Tokyo: Alc.
Tannen, D. (1990) You just don’t understand. New York: Ballantine.
Tannen, D. (1992) Wakariaenai wake. Tokyo: Kodansha.