Lessons Learnt as a High School Japanese Teacher in Australia
Kelly Harrison
Lifelong learning as a teacher of JapaneseWhilst studying Education at university in Australia, I was taught the importance of not only
encouraging my future students to be lifelong learners, but to be a lifelong learner myself. As a nonnative Japanese language teacher, I am acutely aware of the fact that I will, happily, always be astudent of the language and culture I love so much. Additionally, as a teacher, I will continue to learn
each year, each semester, each week about how to improve my practice as a foreign language
teacher and how to encourage more students to continue studying Japanese. I believe there are anumber of internal and external factors that have an impact on the success of Japanese programs inschools in Australia. There are factors which are in the teachers’ control and others which are not.

Internal factors which influence the success of a Japanese programFirstly, internal factors – ways in which a Japanese teacher can have a strong influence over his or
her students. As a beginning teacher, I used to worry about making Japanese ‘too hard’ for students,concerned that if they had too much difficulty they would lose interest. Around the fifth year of mycareer, I became very interested in the bilingual teaching method of CLIL (Content and Language
Integrated Learning). In this methodology, the explicit teaching of language and content enjoy anequal focus. Unlike immersion, where content is taught and language is basically picked up throughexposure, in CLIL, language is still explicitly taught, just in time to access content. This method ofteaching requires students to be exposed to and use a lot of the target language and I was initiallyconcerned that it would be too overwhelming for students. In fact, I discovered the opposite. Thehigher I set my expectations, the better the students performed.
In 2016, I introduced a year-long CLIL program for the Year 10 Japanese students at my school. Thecourse was ‘Japanese Media Studies’. It was an opt-in program, capped at 20 students. We covered
both the Year 10 Japanese curriculum and the Year 10 Media Arts curriculum, all within the allocatedtime for standard Japanese. We covered topics such as Japanese cooking shows, anime andJapanese advertisements and I aimed to only speak Japanese and to encourage students to do thesame. Of course, I worried I was asking too much of the students, as they were required to complete
conceptually and linguistically complex tasks. The course was however, very successful. Students
reported higher levels of motivation and competency and the class had an extremely dynamicatmosphere. I learnt that if you raise the bar for your students, they will meet you there. Coming torealise this transformed my practice. Even if students are nervous to do so, they want to use thelanguage and teachers need to provide students with as many opportunities as possible to do this.
Furthermore, I have learnt over the years not to underestimate how powerful a teacher’s own
passion and enthusiasm are in terms of motivating students. All of those interesting photos, videos
and stories teachers share about Japan, all of the effort they put in to helping students try andunderstand an unfamiliar writing system and tricky particles – the kids do notice. Of course, notevery student will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm, but the students who do respond may goon to make Japanese a big part of their own careers and lives.
Additionally, opportunities for Japanese teachers to network with their colleagues is incrediblyimportant. This can occur through school-supported professional development but can also beachieved by the teacher seeking out online connections. In Australia, we are lucky to have aFacebook page for Australian Japanese teachers, which in January 2018 had over 2400 members.
Teachers from around the country share resources, ideas and are a source of moral support to one
another. In November 2016, after presenting about my Japanese CLIL program at a conference inMelbourne, I started a Japanese CLIL Network Facebook page, which now has over 120 members. Ifind that many teachers are reluctant to experiment with CLIL, as they are unsure where to begin, sothe page is designed to encourage and support more teachers to try out this method. I believe CLIL issteadily gaining momentum as an increasingly popular method of foreign language instruction inAustralia

External factors which influence the success of a Japanese program
Of course, there are also factors outside of a Japanese teacher’s control that influence the successof a program. To highlight this, I will offer some context about Japanese studies in Australia. Sadly,
only around 10% of Australian students continue with foreign language study through to Year 12.
Languages study is compulsory in Australia until the end of Year 8 (the second year of high school inmost states), though this may not be enforced in every school. Different languages are taught indifferent schools across the country so unlike Japan where the common foreign language is English,
the Australian context is plurilingual. Japanese is the most widely taught language in Australia.
However, in many schools, there may only be one, sometimes two, Japanese teachers and in many,many schools, languages teachers often need to fight for their space on the timetable and often feelunappreciated by the school administration.
I was very fortunate in that for almost three years, I had a principal who was a former Japaneseteacher. She was supportive of all pedagogical innovation but of course was a strong advocate forforeign languages. If I had an idea as to how to improve our Japanese program, she would encourageme and offer support. This was very motivating for me and is how my CLIL program started. For
those few years, our Japanese program in Brisbane flourished. The students felt special that theirsubject was valued by the principal and therefore valued by the school. Sadly, very few schools inAustralia have principals who are staunch supporters of foreign languages. I believe if moreprincipals were true advocates for languages, Japanese and all other foreign languages would attract
more Australian students.

The reason why Japanese teachers keep going
In closing, I have learnt that students continue with Japanese not because their parents have told
them it can help them get a good job in the future, but because there is something about being in
the Japanese classroom that makes them happy. Maybe they love the sense of accomplishment theyexperience when they say something and their teacher understands them, maybe they find kanji
fascinating, perhaps they want to be able to watch anime without subtitles or live in Japan one day.
The ultimate goal for a Japanese teacher is for our students to become lifelong learners of Japaneseand I hope that this is a dream that can be realised for more and more teachers around Australia.

Biography:
Kelly Harrison is a high school Japanese and English teacher in Queensland, Australia. She completeda Bachelor of Education and Bachelor of Arts at the University of Queensland, including a one-yearexchange at the Kitakyushu City University. Kelly has taught in government and Catholic schools inBrisbane for the past seven years and has a particular interest in Content and Language Integrated
Learning (CLIL) and curriculum development. She has received a number of grants for action
research programs, mainly focussed on CLIL, and this has allowed her to present at a number ofconferences around Australia. She is currently on maternity leave and involved in writing newJapanese resources for Year 11 and 12 students.