2016
VISIBLEANDVALUABLE
National Symposium onJapanese Language Education
PROCEEDINGSEDITED BY ROBYN SPENCE-BROWN
ISSN: 2207-0184 (ONLINE)

EDITORIAL TEAMEDITOR

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors, and do
not necessarily coincide with those of the editors, the members of thePeer Review Committee or The Japan Foundation, Sydney.

Maki Toshimori
Benjamin Trumbull

The papers in this publication were originally presented at the thirdbiennial National Symposium on Japanese Language Education, heldon 4-5 November 2016 and convened by the Melbourne Centre forJapanese Language Education (now the Monash Japanese Language
Education Centre). They have been peer-reviewed and each appears
in these proceedings by permission of the author(s), who retains
copyright. The papers may be reproduced for fair use under the
Copyright Act 1968, its later amendments and other relevant legislation.

MELBOURNE CENTRE FOR
JAPANESE LANGUAGE EDUCATION

Japanese names are written in first name / surname order, in
accordance with English-language convention.

Anne de Kretser

October 2018

PEER REVIEW COMMITTEE© The Japan Foundation, Sydney 2018. All material in this publication is
copyright. Copyright of each paper belongs to the author. Copyright ofthe collection belongs to The Japan Foundation, Sydney. All copyrighted
images have been reproduced with permission and copyright remains
with the original copyright holders. Apart from any fair use as permitted
under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced without theprior permission of The Japan Foundation, Sydney and other copyrightholders.

Dr Robyn Spence-Brown, Monash University

TEXT EDITORDavid Kelly

THE JAPAN FOUNDATION, SYDNEYProf Chihiro Thomson, UNSW Australia
Ms Anne de Kretser, Monash Japanese Language Education Centre
Mr Gwyn McClelland, PhD Graduate, Monash University
Dr Belinda Kennett, The University of Queensland
Dr Russell Cross, The University of Melbourne

DESIGNJon Zhu

PUBLISHER
The Japan Foundation, Sydney
Level 4, Central Park
28 Broadway Chippendale NSW 2008

ISSN-2207-0184 (ONLINE)
This serial publication is available for download from the
National Symposium on Japanese Language Education website
www.nsjle.org.au
https://doi.org/10.26180/5c6dbf8658058

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

Contents
4

Foreword
Yoshihiro Wada

5

Introduction
Robyn Spence-Brown

54

Targeted differentiation in a Japanese language
course context
Liberty Campbell

61

Towards effective advocacy – evaluation of the Nihongo
Roadshow and the School Leader Fellowship Program
Mayumi Mitsuya and Cathy Jonak

7

Addressing the challenge of languages education inAustralian schools: using promotion and popular culture
to make Japanese visible and valuable
John Hajek

14

68

Contributor Biographies

70

Using picture story books to enact the Australian
Curriculum Languages
Andrea Truckenbrodt

NSJLE 2016 Day 1 Symposium Abstracts

23

NSJLE 2016 Day 2 Symposium Abstracts

Using creative and imaginative texts to teach Japanese
Natalie Pearce28

45 minutes per week: how the Australian Curriculum is
working in a government primary school
Kathleen Duquemin

33

Integrating the learning of language and culture
across the primary curriculum
Susan Palmer

38
ウェラーズヒル小学校における日本語バイリンガルプロ
グラム実施とその成果について(The Wellers Hill State School Japanese Bilingual
Program: implementation and results)
Taku Hashimoto and John Webster

42

Japanese media studies: a Year 10 CLIL program
Kelly Harrison

46

Social media tools to enhance collaboration with students
and colleagues
Shingo Gibson-Suzuki

50

Improving assessment in Japanese throughthe use of digital tools
Nathan Lane

80

3

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

4

Foreword
Yoshihiro Wada

Welcome to this volume offering selected highlights from the National Symposium on Japanese Language Education(NSJLE) 2016.
NSJLE 2016 was held on 4-5 November in Melbourne, and was convened by Anne de Kretser and the Melbourne Centre forJapanese Language Education, Monash University. The symposium is a co-project of the MCJLE and The Japan Foundation,
Sydney. NSJLE 2016 was the third biennial symposium since its beginnings in 2012.
The collection of papers and abstracts presented in this publication stands as testament to the innovation and dedication
shown by Japanese language educators in Australia and to how they are leading the way in making Japanese language
study visible and valuable.
I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable contributions to making this publication possible: Dr Robyn
Spence-Brown, for her dedication to this project as chief editor; Assoc. Prof. Russell Cross, Dr Belinda Kennett, Ms Annede Kretser, Dr Gwyn McClelland, Prof. Chihiro Thomson (in alphabetical order) for taking part in the selection and reviewing
process; Mr David Kelly for his thorough editing and proofreading; and Ms Maki Toshimori and Mr Ben Trumbull for theirefforts in support of this project. Finally, thank you to the contributors to the volume, without whom none of this would bepossible.
To both participants in the symposium and other colleagues with an interest in their work, I hope that the papers andcollection of abstracts presented in this volume spark ideas and discussions in your communities.
Yoshihiro Wada
Director
The Japan Foundation, Sydney
October 2018

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

5

IntroductioN
ROBYN SPENCE-BROWN

The papers in this volume were originally presented at the third National Symposium for Japanese Language Education 2016,
held in Melbourne, Australia.1 They represent a selection of the most interesting presentations, re-worked for publication,and submitted to peer review. The Symposium is a unique opportunity to bring together teachers, researchers and policy
makers involved in Japanese Language Education nationally, and even internationally, from all levels of education. The
theme of the Symposium was ‘Making Japanese Visible and Valuable’, with an emphasis on both increasing the value andeffectiveness of what is done in the classroom, and also promoting the value of learning Japanese to students, schoolcommunities and society more broadly by making it more visible. The volume commences with a paper addressing thetheme directly, and is followed by five papers relating to innovations in primary and lower secondary level programs,
four relating to secondary programs and a final paper addressing a key theme of the conference on the importance ofcollaboration for advocacy. Also included are abstracts from the much wider range of papers that were presented orally
at the Symposium.
The first paper is based on a Keynote paper for the Symposium Addressing the challenge of languages education inAustralian Schools: using promotion and popular culture to make Japanese visible and valuable by Professor John Hajek.
He points out that many of the difficulties for language education have their origin in views of language that are shaped bythe ‘Anglobubble’ and the associated ‘monolingual mindset’ of those who live in English-speaking societies like Australia.
His suggestions for breaking through this mindset include finding and promoting ‘local heroes’ who use Japanese to dointeresting things, as well as using Japanese popular culture, food and other engaging features of Japanese society andculture to promote the value of learning Japanese to students, parents, and school authorities.
All of the papers focussing on primary level programs acknowledge the challenges of delivering meaningful programs inlimited time, and most also explicitly respond to the challenges and opportunities inherent in the Australian Curriculum
Languages (ACL), which was newly released at the time of the Symposium. They provide practical and detailed advice,firmly based on both current theories of language learning and extensive classroom experience. Two papers examine theuse of stories and literature as a foundation for achieving a new and engaging curriculum. In her paper Using picture story
books to enact the Australian Curriculum Languages, Andrea Truckenbrodt first discusses the ACL framework and thetheory of language education on which it is based – intercultural language teaching. She then argues that the use of picture
storybooks provides an ideal frame for enacting the ACL because of the opportunities they provide for linguistic, literacyand (inter)cultural learning. Picture books are also an accessible, much-loved text type for both learners and teachers,
which makes them relatively easy for teachers to use. Natalie Pearce’s paper entitled Using creative and imaginative
texts to teach Japanese was also inspired by the inclusion of the Creating substrand in the ACL. She describes how she
re-developed her curriculum using a variety of creative and imaginative texts as the basis, giving detailed examples whichshould provide inspiration for other teachers.
In her paper 45 minutes per week: how the Australian Curriculum is working in a government primary school, Kathleen
Duquemin elaborates a program that acknowledges the realities of programming constraints by using a combination oflong and short units of work, to vary content and to tailor modules to the available time at different points in the academic
year. The Scope and Sequence which she outlines is firmly based in the ACL and includes a mix of both authentic Japanese
texts and synthetic texts to achieve a curriculum which is both ambitious and practical. Susan Palmer’s paper Integrating
the learning of language and culture across the primary curriculum shares her experiences based on a philosophy which
she summarises under the four key elements: Communication, Connection, Purpose and Experience. Her approach values
experiences that connect and integrate learning across the curriculum, as well as a flexible and collaborative approach

1 Susan Palmer’s paper, then titled ‘Achieving Success in the Primary Classroom’, was presented at the 2014 Symposium.

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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to program design and implementation, working closely with students, parents and classroom teachers to ensure thelearning has purpose, is relevant, and is meaningful and fun.
The following two papers move beyond standard language programs to embrace approaches in which other elements ofthe curriculum are taught through Japanese. Taku Hashimoto and John Webster discuss an innovative bilingual programat the Primary level in their paper ウェラーズヒル小学校における日本語バイリンガルプログラム実施とその成果について (The Wellers Hill State School Japanese Bilingual Program: implementation and results). The program includes extensive
attention to Japanese culture, and adopts a whole school approach, that also involves parents and the wider community.
In a second paper reporting on a content and language integrated approach, this time at secondary level, Kelly Harrison
describes her experiences in a paper entitled Japanese media studies: a Year 10 CLIL program. She discusses the theories
and other works that inspired her, the way in which she implemented CLIL within her own program and the positive resultsfor her students and for herself.
The next three papers tackle different aspects of secondary level programs and all include smart uses of technology toachieve greater efficiency and value. In Social media tools to enhance collaboration with students and colleagues, Shingo
Gibson-Suzuki outlines the ways in which he uses various forms of social media both in class and in out of class activities.
He also discusses the development of extensive networks for Japanese teachers through social media sites that he has
established.
Nathan Lane’s paper Improving assessment in Japanese through the use of digital tools also leverages technology toimplement an effective program of formative assessment that gives timely feedback to students, in addition to efficientsummative assessment. He outlines the wide range of applications that can be used to provide assessment in ways thatboth benefit students, and save time for teachers.
In her paper on Targeted differentiation in a Japanese language course context, Liberty Campbell discusses her experience
with implementing a student-centred program in which students chose and worked through a range of self-determinedtasks, and received individual feedback. This resulted in teachers spending more time connecting and communicating withindividuals in the class and provided more opportunities for the students to make decisions about their learning and how
they would demonstrate their progress. The results were very positively evaluated by the students, particularly those fromthe academically weaker group.
The final paper in the volume tackles one of the underlying themes of the conference, advocacy, in Towards effective
advocacy – evaluation of the Nihongo Roadshow and the School Leader Fellowship Program. Mayumi Mitsuya and Cathy
Jonak, of the Japan Foundation, provide evaluations of two programs designed to address advocacy for JLE, one aimed
at students and communities and one at school leaders. They found that the Nihongo Roadshow was highly effective
in remote areas in boosting students’ engagement, and providing opportunities to connect to Japanese language andculture. The School Leader Fellowship Program had a significant impact on principals and administrators in leading them torecognise the importance of intercultural understanding and Japanese language programs in their own schools/ states. A
supplementary survey revealed that materials and resources alone are not enough for advocacy, that advocacy skills andnetworking are also crucial; and this is clearly an area in which more work is required in future.
In summary, the papers in this volume demonstrate the innovativeness and vitality of Japanese language education inAustralia. The key to the success of Japanese is its well-informed, creative and passionate teachers, and the strengthof the organisations that support them. We hope that the papers in this volume, which introduce real innovations acrossa wide range of schools and levels, inspire other teachers to drive change in their own schools and across their own
communities in order to ensure that Japanese language education is increasingly effective and valued, and achieves thevisibility that it deserves.
Robyn Spence-Brown
Monash University

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

7

Addressing the challengeof languages educationin Australian schools:
using promotion andpopular culture to makeJapanese visible andvaluableJohn Hajek
Director, Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-cultural Communication (RUMACCC) and Professor of Italian Studies
University of Melbourne

Introduction
The theme of the third National Symposium on Japanese Language Education held in Melbourne in November 2016 was
making Japanese language teaching and learning visible and valuable in Australia. This contribution is based on my keynote
lecture at the Symposium, and has the following aims:(a) to provide simple tools to frame the way we can think and talk about the challenges for languages education inAustralia, and Japanese in particular; and(b) to suggest practical solutions to these challenges in order to significantly strengthen the place of Japanese language
and culture inside and outside the classroom.
Japanese has many potential positives in its favour at all levels of education, despite the challenges it faces along withlanguages education more broadly in Australia. At the macro level, there is great depth of engagement with respect toJapanese within Australian education – both over time and scale of effort and uptake. At the micro level, the richness
and appeal of Japanese language and culture mean that Japanese is well placed to be successful in our schools and to
generate interest and support more broadly in school communities. In this context, it can also serve as a successful model
for all languages.

Understanding the challenge for languages education in Australia
How do we make languages indispensable in the Australian education system and wider society? We have decades ofexperience showing us how difficult this aim is to achieve. In the case of Japanese in our schools, there are specificconcerns about the long-term impact of the termination of national funding programs to support Asian language andNSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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literacies in schools, and the rise of Chinese and China in the context of the Asian Century (see e.g. Tohsaku, 2014). In thiscontext, we need to think laterally, and engage in new (and old) ways, to make Japanese (and other languages) desirable
and in turn valuable.
The task is a serious one, but I would argue it should also be engaging. Humour can be a useful tool to help get the message
across. As I explained and I hope I also demonstrated during my keynote presentation, such an approach should not be seen
as undermining the importance of what we do as language educators and what needs to be done to strengthen languages
education in Australia. Instead, humour can be a valuable additional tool to make important points and to change people’s
minds when they might otherwise be resistant to change. It is difficult to translate the particular humorous approach into
written form, so I do not aim to replicate it here, other than to say it sits within a broader positive approach to the promotionof languages education that much of this contribution is written in.

Why aren’t languages thriving in our schools? A simple frame
It is often said that languages are not thriving in Australian schools.1 This is certainly the case when we compare with othernations that are high achievers in education. In the case of Finland, which has become a fashionable model for Australianeducation policymakers to follow and visit, each student receives significant school time in three languages in addition totheir mother tongue. Most children have Finnish (more rarely Swedish) as their first language, and Swedish (more rarely
Finnish), English and one other language. The average Finnish student leaves school with reasonable to good fluency in atleast two (usually Swedish and English) of the three additional languages (a fact confirmed by my own observation).
In order to address this challenge in Australia, where do we start? While there are many ways to talk about languages
education and the challenges it faces, I suggest it may be useful to understand them first by framing them in a relatively
simple and accessible way.
It is important to understand that the problem is greater than our classrooms, and does not begin in our classrooms. It isin fact a wider societal issue that then impacts on policy settings, resourcing and provision for languages in our education
system. Australia is not alone on this front – it is a fundamental challenge for all English-speaking countries. The broader‘language challenge’ can be usefully explained by the powerful interaction of two phenomena: (a) the monolingual mindset;and (b) the so-called Anglobubble, a term I have proposed on previous occasions. These simple concepts are very usefulin helping us understand the language challenge in Australia and how we might respond to it.
The term ‘monolingual mindset’ was first introduced into English by Professor Michael Clyne, and he defines it in thefollowing way:
The greatest impediment to recognizing, valuing and utilizing our language potential is a persistent monolingual
mindset. Such a mindset sees everything in terms of monolingualism being the norm, even though there are morebi- and multilinguals in the world than monolinguals. (Clyne, 2005)
The monolingual mindset is not inherently linked or restricted to English, but it has been repeatedly identified as characteristicof present-day English-speaking societies such as Australia. This is in spite of the increasingly linguistically and culturally
diverse nature of the populations of the major L1 English-speaking countries as a result of ongoing migration (see e.g. Hajek& Slaughter 2014 for examples of the operation and impact of the mindset).
The term ‘Anglobubble’ can be understood as follows:This is that part of the world, with a concentration of monolingual English speakers, that operates in English, and thinks
it only natural that:(a) everything should happen in English and should logically be experienced and understood in English; and that(b) everyone speaks or should speak English.

1

See e.g. Nicholas, 2014; Slaughter, 2011; de Kretser & Spence-Brown, 2010, for an overview of many of the factors at play.

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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There is a clear connection between being English-speaking (particularly as first and only language) and a bounded but
see-through separation from the multilingual diversity and reality of the world outside the bubble. It is intended to beslightly tongue in cheek, precisely to contrast with more serious terms such as ‘Anglosphere’ or ‘English-speaking world’.
It is this aspect that makes it particularly useful in helping to frame the way we can talk about languages education to
engage with different audiences. It is especially useful when talking, for instance, to students about why learning otherlanguages may be useful or beneficial. My own direct experience has shown that students understand the term and areable to play with it, quickly giving examples that show the Anglobubble (and monolingual mindset for that matter) in actionin their own experience of the world.
Given the enormous social and economic capital of English around the globe, it is not surprising to see how easily theconcepts of monolingual mindset and the Anglobubble can come together, nor why they are so difficult to dislodge onceenmeshed. Steve Price, an Australian media personality with significant influence, makes no bones in an opinion piece in a
major daily about his views on languages and languages education, as seen in this short quote:
The new national curriculum will, after establishing Italian and Chinese, also teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
languages. Why? Can’t someone explain to the bureaucrats and educators that this is a massive waste of time andresources? English, as anyone who regularly travels will tell you, is the universal language of business, diplomacy andentertainment. (Price 2011)
The words ‘anyone who regularly travels’ (by implication, the author of the quote) highlights one important element of theAnglobubble: it is not fixed to any one location, but is easily portable, able to move with L1 English speakers wherever theymight go. They are likely, for instance, when travelling to stay in hotels and seek services in some form of English (often
at a significant premium). Steve Price has clearly not been to Japan (or many other places) where, based on my own
experience, the ability to function in English as an outsider entering the country is extremely limited.

Responding to the challenge
Now that we have a simple way of framing the challenging context in which Australian schools and languages education
operate, what can we do so that languages education thrives? More specifically, how can we ensure that native English
speakers understand they need more than English to operate in the world, so that they want to participate in language
learning? How can we do this in a way that is compelling and perhaps surprising?
In the first instance, we need to increase demand and desire for languages inside and outside classrooms. Without this, weare unable to address all the issues that we have long been aware of, such as inadequate policy, resources, and teacher
quality and supply.2
To increase demand and desire, it is essential to have a strong strategy both at the local level (in our schools) and nationally(across society). The local level is one educators and teachers can address themselves, individually, but ideally working
together with other teachers – and is the focus of this contribution. The national level needs significant institutional/
political support, of a kind that is ideally consistent, long term and well funded. In both cases, promotion and advocacy are
essential, supported by high-quality marketing and a range of ideas old and new to be implemented. Successful marketing
requires good strategy and in particular, a great product – something that Japanese clearly is (see below).
As part of this pro-language approach, I am a strong proponent of using popular culture to our advantage, both forpromotional purposes to generate interest inside and outside the classroom, and to support classroom learning. It is
self-evident that target language and culture are always essential elements in both these contexts, but, as I argue below,
attention should also be given to using our students’ own Anglo-oriented culture as an unexpectedly effective tool.
We should always be careful to extend our efforts well beyond the classroom within the school – to students not currently
learning Japanese as well as to other teachers, principals and parents. Popular culture can be a very effective element of a‘whole of school’ approach. What happens outside the classroom can have significant impact on what happens inside. This
presents a challenge to language teachers who, given the local and national contexts that they operate in, are expected
to be skilled in the promotion of and advocacy for language education in schools as a valuable learning area for students.

2

See e.g. Slaughter, 2011 on the vagaries of national policy on Asian languages educationNSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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Where is Japanese in all this? A great product which could do with a hero-based
strategy
While I have raised some concerns about the current place of Japanese in our education sector (see also Tohsaku 2014
and de Kretser and Spence-Brown 2010), the factors that weigh on Japanese language teaching are not specific to thelanguage, but are the result of external pressures that impact on the entire languages education sector. It is important tounderstand that Japanese (understood as shorthand for Japanese language and culture together) is, from a marketing
perspective, a marketer’s dream. Japanese culture – both traditional and modern – offers amazing possibilities to engage
with students, schools and the broader public. I don’t need to list them all for you, other than to point to the very broad
range – from traditional arts and cuisine to manga, anime, high tech and beyond. However, using elements of Japanese
language and culture to motivate Japanese language learning, while essential and inevitable in the classroom, is in itself
not sufficient. These elements need to be integrated within a broader framework that motivates and sustains interest inJapanese inside and outside the classroom. In the first instance, the framework requires, amongst other things, a humanapproach, i.e. an understanding that as social animals we are likely to respond to the interests and influence of otherpeople. In the Australian context, this is easily exemplified by the popularity and impact of sporting heroes – their successon the field is used by marketers precisely to motivate and change the perceptions and behaviours of the target audience.
This may be, for instance, through the use of sporting heroes to promote products, or sponsored visits by sporting heroes
to schools to encourage participation in sport. The fact that advertisers spend large fortunes on sponsored deals withsporting heroes year after year confirms the impact these individuals have on people around them.
It is in this context that I suggest we need heroes to promote Japanese inside and outside our schools. The question thenbecomes: who are the Japanese-language heroes Australians can recognise and connect with? I suggest a two-pronged
response here:(a) We need real people and stories that people can connect with; and more generally,(b) We also need to use star power, role models, Anglo culture – anything and everything at our disposal.
A hero-based approach is designed to get the language message across and to increase the value of and desire for
languages in our schools. That’s good marketing!
In the first instance, students need heroes to connect with the idea that it is perfectly ‘normal’ as an Australian to speak
Japanese, or to want to do so. But where are the language heroes for Japanese? For a successful strategy we needboth people ‘just like us’ and the big stars with influence. At the moment, developing a hero-based approach to Japaneseremains a challenge, since it is difficult – even after decades of Japanese language education in Australia – to find them,especially at national level. I am currently aware of only two such national heroes who are fluent in Japanese:(a) Adam Liaw, a well-known celebrity TV chef(b) Gotye, an internationally successful singer and musician.
Adam Liaw was originally a lawyer who was sent to Japan for work before winning the first edition of the Australian
television reality show Master Chef. He lived in Japan for some years and now has a Japanese wife and speaks very goodJapanese. He is a successful author and seen regularly on Australian television. He can be found on Youtube promoting
Japanese language and culture, e.g. ‘Nine Useful Japanese Phrases with Adam Liaw’.3
Gotye, raised in Melbourne, is best known for his global smash hit ‘Somebody that I used to know’ which broke records
around the world, including in the USA. The official video clip4 has had more than 890 million views and both the song andthe clip are very well known to our students – something that should be borne in mind. Few know, however, that he is alsoa fluent speaker of Japanese – a language he studied at school and at university in Australia. He can also be found online
speaking in Japanese on television, in interviews and in concerts in Japan.5 It is only a pity that we cannot find clips of Gotyewith a digital quality that would maximise the impact of his speaking Japanese.

3
45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuCDtrhI6k4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62-1G0pv2lQ

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There is a third candidate, somewhat limited but useful nevertheless: Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr, who hasheadlined a series of major advertising campaigns on Japanese television.6 In many cases, especially for the laundry
product, Fundry, she is seen speaking coached Japanese.7 Whilst Kerr is not fluent in any real sense, the element of
surprise here is useful in generating interest.
The paucity of identifiable Japanese-speaking Australian national heroes is an indication of how difficult it is to change
entrenched patterns favouring monolingualism in Australia. That said, the three heroes identified here provide teacherswith practical opportunities. They can be used by teachers of Japanese with students but also, critically, with parents andothers during language promotion events. The various clips available online, particularly the advertisements, also provide
valuable teaching and learning material. Teachers might want, for instance, to (a) translate and recreate ‘Somebody that
I used to know’ in Japanese; (b) have students contact language heroes directly to ask about their Japanese language
experiences; and (c) analyse the language and cultural content of Miranda Kerr’s Fundry advertisements.

Additional practical suggestions for language promotion andteaching
With a clear and effective multi-faceted strategy that addresses the needs and interests of all sections of the schoolcommunity – students, fellow teachers, principals and parents – it is entirely possible to foster a strong languages programsupported by the entire school community. However, such an outcome also involves effort and visibility inside and outside
the class.
While language promotion through distribution of information, e.g. flyers, bookmarks, gift bags, is undoubtedly essential, it isimportant to understand that practical activities are also very powerful in drawing students’ attention and motivating them
to begin and to continue. There are many practical suggestions – some of which, often provided by Japanese language
teachers, are outlined in the sections that follow.

Japanese language teachers in Australia share their ideas
There is no paucity of practical suggestions available to language teachers for language promotion and teaching. Manyof these come from the direct experience of Japanese language teachers keen to share their knowledge and ideas at
the National Symposium event. For instance, Lane (2016), drawing on his experience as a Japanese language teacher inAustralia, provides a very useful comprehensive list of the kinds of whole-of-school activities that are useful in reachingout to students, parents and teachers. Howard (2014) discusses her experience of the Japanese language speech night– an activity where students engage outside the classroom with the school community. Lee, Asano and Koga (2016) use
the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami to bring real world events into the school environment. Venning (2014) outlines her
experiences of using wikis to generate interest amongst students and parents. She highlights in fairly simple fashion how
a technologically oriented activity functions and can also be effective in generating interest and support amongst parents.
Undoubtedly more exciting and more challenging is the staging of Japanese language flashmobs, as described in detailby Venning (2016), who explains the process as well as the benefits. The motivating impact of this inclusive activity on
students is very evident in her account.

The cover song
I have long promoted the cover song as a secret weapon for pedagogical and promotional success for languages education.
That is, well-known English-language songs that are translated into the target language, e.g. Japanese.
I use the term ‘secret weapon’ not because teachers haven’t used the cover song for teaching purposes in the past, but
because I don’t think its potential utility and effect have been understood. While much of our work as language educators6 	http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2425001/Victorias-Secret-model-Miranda-Kerr-stars-Japanese-detergent-advert.html
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnlggqGKeXc
7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeXh-yXwEXMNSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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is to foster inter-cultural understanding and awareness of the other through exposure to what is different and unique inother languages and cultures, we should also be aware of the powerful motivating effect of seeing oneself in translation.
Students (and others) connect emotionally with cover songs for very good reason – since they ‘understand’ them already.
Pre-existing exposure within the context of one’s own language and culture also facilitates learning, as well as generating
genuine curiosity that we can tap into.
Teachers might consider Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I used to know’ as a useful starting point, especially with older students.
While linking with the language-hero back story, one might start with translation of the song’s lyrics as a classroom-basedtask before moving to actual musical production and the possible creation of a video clip – in collaboration with music andart teachers respectively. Otherwise, a great place to start for all ages is the Cup Song – an old song revived in the teenmovie Pitch Perfect (released in 2012). The song has since achieved global success and is well known to young people
for its use of simple clapping and cups to create an audible beat and visual effect.8 There are thousands of imitations andlessons devised by individuals on line. There is also an appealing Japanese version with young female students9 as well
as a short commercial that was broadcast on Japanese television.10 Both of these can be used as models for students toimitate. However, an excellent real-life example of how the Cup Song can be used as a ‘whole of school’ activity or event isfound in Coláiste Lurgan’s Irish Gaelic version involving the participation of hundreds of L2 learners, which has had millionsof views.11
What the Cup Song highlights in any language, including English, is the positive multimodal aspects and impacts it provide.
It is fun and practical, and is of equal interest to boys and girls. It supports all learning styles, and is experiential, given the
integration of physical movement, song and language learning. It is also up to the moment, and clearly outcome-oriented
in a way that students and those watching understand. One only has to watch the end of Coláiste Lurgan’s version of the
Cup Song to see the wildly positive effects of the approach.

Turn your principal into a local language hero
Everyone knows that principals play a critical role in supporting languages programs in our schools. Principals’ responsibilities
are great, as is their impact on every aspect of their school’s operation. Where principals are very positive, they function asstrong role models for teachers and parents and are more likely to provide adequate resourcing, appropriate timetabling andmoral support. In this context, languages programs are undoubtedly more likely to thrive. Unfortunately, long experiencehas also told us that in many cases principals, for a long list of reasons not discussed here, are not positively inclined
towards languages education. They often have negative attitudes towards languages (the monolingual mindset at work),making life more difficult for language teachers and their programs (see e.g. De Kretser and Spence-Brown 2010). In thesecases, we need to think about how we can transform attitudes and turn the principals in question into supportive rolemodels – in a context where resistance to change can be ingrained.
While there are many ways we can try to reach out to principals, undoubtedly the most effective way to change attitudes
and to turn principals into positive role models is to send them to Japan. There are programs currently in place, and these
are well thought out, with pre- and post-departure support in addition to time in Japan. While home-stay in Japan may not
be effective for every principal, it is undoubtedly the case – based on frequent observation by Japanese language teachers– that immersion visits really do change most principals and in turn the environment for Japanese language teaching inthe schools these principals manage.

Food – the not-so-secret weapon
It should not surprise an outsider that language teachers often rely on food for educational and promotional purposes;
Italian gelati days must be very well known. Lane (2014) integrates food consumption into his whole-of-school approachto the promotion of Japanese. A food-based strategy, if well thought out, can be particularly effective in the Australian
context. National surveys show that 95% of Australians identify food as the strongest and best evidence of successful
multiculturalism in this country. In this context, Japanese is particularly well placed given the depth of its culinary history

8
9
10
11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOW0QnHKoHc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DlOW9cZqjk
The Youtube version of the commercial viewed for this paper is no longer available
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz63M3v11nE

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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and practices. It is easy to organize activities and events around many different Japanese food elements. One can be surethat many teachers, for instance, regularly teach students how to prepare sushi. But there are many other elements to
explore, especially ones that are less well-known to the broader population, e.g. tempura – both in terms of its history as
an intercultural contact phenomenon between East and West, and the technique involved (the technique and its namewere borrowed from the Portuguese centuries ago). There are other exciting possibilities, including the concept of umami– novel to most Australians and something that can be integrated into language teaching and promotion in many different
ways. From a pedagogical perspective, umami can also be linked into science lessons – given its controversial nature andrecent scientific research in the west that seeks to understand what it is or isn’t. An Umami Day event for the whole school
is likely to intrigue not only students but also teachers and parents.

Conclusion
There are many things we can say about the difficulties and challenges that languages education in Australia faces; thesehave been well described and reported by many different observers. It is helpful, however, to think in relatively simple
terms, using concepts such as the monolingual mindset and the Anglobubble, about the macro or big-picture issues that
impact negatively on the learning and teaching of Japanese and other languages. It makes it easier for us to explain anddiscuss the issues to others – whether we are talking to students, to teachers, principals or parents. We need to think
about strategies to improve and support language teaching. Promotion and marketing are critical. Japanese language andculture sell themselves very easily in this context. However, we also need to work more broadly through strategies such as
finding Japanese-speaking heroes, adopting a whole-of-school approach, and establishing a program of practical activities
and strategies that support, motivate and ideally transform. A number of suggestions have been made here, for example,
drawing on existing cultural knowledge by using Japanese cover versions of English pop songs, sending principals to Japanon an immersion experience, and thinking of new ways of exploiting Japanese food culture – these and other suggestions
are all intended to make Japanese valuable, visible and ultimately highly desirable and successful.

References
Anderson, K. (2016). Does making Japan still matter: teachers, study-abroad and relevance. In Thomson (ed.), pp.14-25.
Clyne, M. (2005). Australia’s language potential. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
De Kretser, A. and R. Spence-Brown (2010). The current state of Japanese language education in Australian schools. Carlton South, Australia: Education
Services
Hajek, J., and Y. Slaughter (eds) (2014). Challenging the monolingual mindset. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Howard, M. (2014). Japanese speech night at the primary school level: advocacy through language learning. In Thomson (ed.), pp.83-94.
Lane, N. (2016). A whole-of-school approach to promoting Japanese involving students, teachers and parents. In Thomson (ed), pp.130-137.
Lee, C., M. Asano and H. Koga (2016). Japanese beyond the classroom: learning about the Tohoku disaster to connect Japanese language learning to thereal world. In Thomson (ed.), pp.103-116.
Nicholas, H. (2014). Losing bilingualism whle promoting second language acquisition in Australian language policy. In Hajek and Slaughter (eds), pp.165-182.
Price, S. (2011). Let’s ditch the study of languages. Herald Sun (3 February).
Slaughter, Y. (2011). Bringing Asia to the Home Front: The Australian Experience of Asian Language Education through National Policy. In C. Norrby and J.
Hajek (eds), Uniformity and diversity in language policy: global perspectives. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp.157-176.
Spence-Brown, R. (2016). Japanese language education in Australia today: an overview. In Thomson (ed.), pp.26-42.
Thomson. C. K. (ed.) (2014). National Symposium on Japanese Language Education Proceedings 2012: Creating the Future. Sydney: The Japan Foundation.
Thomson, C. K. (ed.) (2016). 2014/Local Connections, Global Visions. National Symposium on Japanese Language Education Proceedings. Sydney: The JapanFoundation.
Tohsaku, Y-H. (2014). Japanese language education in the global era: new perspectives and advocacy. In Thomson (ed.), pp.3-14.
Venning, W. (2014). Wiki wonderland: a tool for learning and advocacy. In Thomson (ed.), pp.73-82.
Venning, W. (2016). Funk up your Japanese with a flashmob! In Thomson (ed.), pp.60-69.

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Using picture story books
to enact the Australian
Curriculum Languages
Andrea Truckenbrodt
Language and Literacy Education
Melbourne Graduate School of Education

Introduction
Planning, designing, developing and implementing a new curriculum is hard work. The reality for many Languages teachersin Australia is that they are one-person departments, particularly teachers working in primary schools (Liddicoat et al.,2007). In schools with larger Languages departments, there may only be a single (full-time) representative of a specificlanguage. Therefore, the task of creating a new curriculum typically falls to a single Languages teacher. Further, thelanguages teacher is likely to be the only professional in the school with expertise in this learning area, so they cannot
look to curriculum leaders or more senior colleagues for informed guidance. The release of the Australian Curriculum
Languages in 2014 has prompted a new round of curriculum change, with which Languages must now engage. Indeed, theeducational jurisdictions of most states and territories in Australia have either adopted or adapted the Australian Curriculum
Languages (Australian Curriculum, Development and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2017a).
The curriculum reform literature indicates that curriculum change is a very difficult thing to achieve (Yates, 2011). Connor(2011) describes the negative effects of poor implementation strategies and Gilbert (2012) points out that effective
curriculum reform is predicated on teachers having a clear understanding of both the theoretical underpinnings (what is itthat we as teachers are trying to do and how is it different from what we’re doing now?) and the means by which the new
curriculum can be delivered effectively (how do I teach this new material or in this new way?). This paper aims to address
both of these precursors to effective curriculum reform.
This paper and the presentation on which it is based are intended for teachers who are in the position of having to engage
with a new languages curriculum, possibly without access to optimal support. It describes an approach to languages
curriculum renewal that is potentially relevant in any context but particularly so for teachers working within an intercultural
language teaching framework. The paper is organized around the following key questions:
•
•
•
•
•

How do I approach the new curriculum?
What is the Australian Curriculum Languages (ACL)?
How do I work with the ACL?
What’s new about this curriculum?
Why should I use picture story books to deliver the ACL?

Examples of classroom materials, particularly from Japanese units of work based on picture story books, have been usedthroughout to help bridge the theory–practice divide.

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How do I approach the new curriculum?
When faced with the task of re-writing their curriculum, there are three approaches teachers might adopt. The first, andin my view least preferred, option is the one I have referred to as the ‘tinkering’ approach. It describes the situation where
teachers make only cosmetic changes to their current curriculum in response to a new curriculum initiative. In reference
to curriculum reform in South Australia, Dellit described teachers who ‘had adopted [only] the rhetoric of reform’. They did
not actually change their practice; rather, they changed ‘the ways that they explained what they were doing’ (Dellit, 2011,
p. 158).
The second possible approach is captured by the ‘renovation’ metaphor. Here the teacher retains the best elements ofthe current curriculum or those elements that conform to the new curriculum. The decision regarding what changes
to introduce would be governed by necessity (i.e. an aspect is not in the current curriculum) or elements of the new
curriculum that would enhance the old curriculum. To illustrate using the renovation analogy, one might think of replacing
an old bathroom and adding an outdoor deck.
This second ‘renovation’ option is realised through undertaking a careful audit of the current curriculum. For example,
the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA, 2017) has created online auditing tools for teachers to map
their current units of work with reference to the new Victorian Curriculum, both against the content descriptions and theachievement standards (see below) for the relevant year levels. Analysing the results of this auditing process serves anumber of functions. According to VCAA, teachers can:•••identify gaps or areas of ‘over teaching’;
determine if there is sufficient time allocation relative to the aspect’s perceived importance and to enable learners
to achieve the desired outcomes;
evaluate current opportunities for learner growth and progression in the language.

Teachers adopting this approach might retain their current curriculum but add, remove or enhance elements. For example,
teachers used to a target-language-only approach might not previously have included learning activities where learners
develop an understanding of the issues around translation called for in the new ACL. In my own practice, my reception
level learners enjoyed the German version of the picture story book Maisy’s Bedtime (Cousins, 1999; Cousins, 2004). They
were intrigued as to why the main character (Mausi) and her friends had different names in the German version. After
having engaged with the ACL, I can now imagine a whole class discussion around translations, name selection, identity
and English/German pronunciation of common names. The discussion would presumably be expanded and enhanced byinclusion of other languages known to the learners.
The third response to a new curriculum initiative might be referred to metaphorically as the ‘launch pad’ approach. Hereteachers could see the introduction of a new curriculum framework as a catalyst to create completely new learning
experiences for their students. Teachers might take inspiration from a new element such as the ‘Creating’ sub-strand of
the ACL and develop a common thread in their new curriculum around a genre such as poetry. Students in Years 7–10
would explore and experiment with different forms of Japanese poetry such as haiku, renga, waka and iroha mokigusarias they progress through the school.
Within this third approach to curriculum renewal, the Languages teacher is relatively free to develop worthwhile units ofwork that meet the needs and interests of the learners. Detailed reference to the source curriculum occurs after the firstdraft of the unit of work. At this stage, links are identified with the source curriculum and any necessary modifications tothe units of work made to ensure it reflects the outcomes of the new curriculum. However, as noted earlier, the creationof new units of work which are securely and coherently located within the new curriculum framework necessitates
Languages teachers being familiar with the design, detail and expectations of the new curriculum as well as its theoreticalunderpinnings. To this end, the next sections describe the ACL and the theory of language teaching it is predicated on.

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What is the Australian Curriculum Languages (ACL)?
STRAND

SUB-STRAND

DESCRIPTION

Communicating

1.1 SocialisingInteracting orally and in writing to exchange ideas, opinions, experiences, thoughts andfeelings; and participating in planning, negotiating, deciding and taking action.

1.2 Informing

Obtaining, processing, interpreting and conveying information through a range of oral,
written and multimodal texts; developing and applying knowledge.

1.3 Creating

Engaging with imaginative experience by participating in, responding to and creating a rangeof texts, such as stories, songs, drama and music.

1.4 Translating

Moving between languages and cultures orally and in writing, recognising different
interpretations and explaining these to others.

1.5 Reflecting

Participating in intercultural exchange, questioning reactions and assumptions; andconsidering how interaction shapes communication and identity.

2.1 Systems of language

Understanding language as a system, including sound, writing, grammatical and textual
conventions.

2.2 Language variation andchangeUnderstanding how languages vary in use (register, style, standard and non-standard
varieties) and change over time and place.

2.3 The role of language andcultureAnalysing and understanding the role of language and culture in the exchange of meaning.

Understanding

Table 1. Australian Curriculum Languages Structure (ACARA, 2017b)

Language-specific curricula for the Australian Curriculum Languages learning area have been written for 14 languages:
Arabic, Auslan, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Modern Greek, Spanish, Turkish
and Vietnamese. Frameworks have also been provided for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages and Classicallanguages. All of the ACL language-specific curricula are organized in the same way. There are generic Introduction,
Rationale, Aims and Key ideas sections. Then for each language there is a unique Context statement followed by a Banddescription encompassing one of 5 levels between Foundation and Year 10, a description of the mandatory content to betaught and a two-paragraph description of the Achievement standard to be realised by learners within the specified band
period. The description of the content is organized into two strands, communicating and understanding, which are further
sub-divided into 8 sub-strands. Table 1 above provides a brief description of the strands and sub-strands for all languages
except Auslan, which has additional sub-strands.
Content descriptions represent the compulsory skills, knowledge and understandings that students should acquire atdifferent levels of schooling (bands). Each of the sub-strands has at least one content description for each band. Eachcontent description is accompanied by multiple content elaborations, which are examples of possible learning activities
that would enable students to achieve the content described. The content elaborations are not compulsory, although thetarget language examples included in the elaborations provide teachers with a sense of expected level. The achievement
standards share a common format. They are two paragraphs in length; the first paragraph refers to the communication
strand and the second paragraph refers to the understanding strand.
Two curricula exist for each language except Chinese, which has five different curricula. The two curricula reflect different
starting points: Foundation to Year 10 and Year 7 to Year 10. The achievement standards for the two sequences of learning
are different between the two pathways. There are some differences to note between different languages in the ACL. In
all languages except Chinese, the curricula are written for either second language (L2) learners or background learners.
In the case of Chinese, curricula exist for L2, background and L1 learners; for the last of these, a curriculum exists for theYear 7–10 sequence only.

How do I work with the ACL?
The strands and sub-strands of the ACL are not intended to be delivered separately. For example, given a single learning
intention such as learning to express quantity, the F–Year 2 band of the ACL Japanese (ACARA 2017d) might involve the 5sub-strands of ‘Informing’ (i.e. saying how many people in their family, how many objects they see in a picture), ‘Translating’(saying numbers in other languages they know), ‘Reflecting’ (on how English and Japanese ways of counting differ, and on
learning a new script (kanji) to represent numbers), ‘Systems of language’ (counters), and ‘Language variation and change’NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

17(how the nature of the object counted impacts on vocabulary and grammatical choices). Other sub-strands might comeinto play depending on the context chosen to achieve the learning outcome. For example, learning a Japanese number
rhyme or song involving numbers or playing Bingo could incorporate the ‘Creating’ and ‘Socialising’ sub-strands. Thus,
one important point to note is that a single learning activity can be used to deliver content descriptions from multiple substrands. When designing units of work, teachers work vertically with the ACL, integrating the sub-strands as appropriate.
From the example given above, it is also clear that the ACL is a framework and not a syllabus. The Content descriptions
and Achievement standards for each language are very broadly expressed and thereby afford teachers significant flexibility
in the design and delivery of their language programs. Some Languages teachers rely on textbooks to structure theirprograms, using chapters as de facto units of curriculum. If this is not possible or desirable, the question of selecting
curriculum organizing units is then germane when using the ACL. Traditionally topics, themes and units of inquiry are othercurriculum units commonly used in the development of language syllabuses, particularly at the primary level. The Australian
Curriculum Languages: Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum Design document (ACARA 2014) outlines the importance ofbasing units of work around ‘concepts’ because they ‘lend themselves more fruitfully to intercultural comparison andengage learners in personal reflection and more substantive learning’ (p. 12). Scarino and Liddicoat (2009) and others (e.g.
Nunan, 2004) advocate the use of tasks as curriculum units.
In this paper, the picture story book is suggested as a possible frame for student learning. Picture story books can serve as
useful curriculum-organizing units because they give learning activities coherence by relating them to the book in some way.
A recently published Indonesian unit created for an EAL and Languages project (Slaughter & Truckenbrodt, 2016; Slaughter etal., 2016) illustrates this strategy. The selection of the focus language features (e.g. negation using tidak/buah, and the verbs
saya, ‘to like’, and makan, ‘to eat’), texts (e.g. a days-of-the-week song), a fruit diary, and learning experiences (e.g. tasting
and recording fruit preferences) all related back to the source picture story book (Dua Orang Utan Yang Luci Sekali).
It is important to note that picture story books as curriculum units do not preclude the use of concepts or tasks. Picture
books can be readily used for the exploration of concepts or inquiry questions, and also provide a stimulus for authentic
tasks. Liauw et al. (2014) created a unit of work which utilised a picture story book version of the Japanese fable ‘The
Mouse’s Marriage’ to inform learners’ response to the inquiry questions: How do people celebrate weddings in Australia andJapan? and What does literature tell us about how people choose a life partner? The concepts of ‘celebration’, ‘relationships’or ‘traditions’ (ACARA, 2014, p. 13) could also have been explored through this text. Similarly, the ‘Mottainai Grandma text
(Shinju, 2005) could be the catalyst for a whole-school investigation into waste reduction strategies.

What’s new about the ACL?
The potentially new and challenging aspect of the ACL is that it is located within the intercultural language teaching space.
Intercultural language teaching (IcLT) has been advocated for and delivered for at least 20 years, but an agreed andaccessible representation of its principles remains elusive. The language teacher reference literature (Larsen-Freeman& Anderson, 2011; Richards & Rodgers, 2014) provides historical overviews of different language teaching methods andapproaches used up to the present day, but IcLT is not described. Brown and Lee (2015) have a chapter devoted to thecultural and sociopolitical contexts of language teaching but describe intercultural competence in two paragraphs (at 167)
with no direction on how it is to be achieved.
Scarino and Liddicoat (2009) reject reductionist, simplistic ‘methodological prescriptions’ of IcLT. They call instead for
languages teachers to adopt a personal, professional ‘stance’ that is constantly evolving. They argue that this is necessary
given the complex and dynamic nature of ‘using language and languages in our multilingual and multicultural world’ (Scarino& Liddicoat, 2009, 5). Difficulties in realising IcLT in practice are therefore not unexpected. Diaz (2012) identified obstacles
to engagement with intercultural language teaching which include ‘the lack of clear understanding of the language andculture nexus’, the continued focus on linguistic competence and ad hoc and incidental incorporation of cultural aspects into
languages teaching (p. 33). Thus, if teachers want to use the advent of the ACL as a catalyst to be creative and to design newunits of work reflecting an intercultural stance (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013; Kramsch, 1997), they need to understand IcLT
well enough to integrate it into their current pedagogic stance. There are a growing number of teacher-friendly references
teachers can access (Scarino & Liddicoat, 2009; Australian Government Quality Teacher Program [AGQTP], 2007; Asian
Languages Professional Learning Project [ALPLP], n.d.). However, the big ideas of intercultural language teaching such as

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18‘language’, ‘culture’ and ‘intercultural capability’ are captured in summary form in the ACL glossary (ACARA, 2017c), which
is helpful for busy educators. From my perspective, these definitions of key concepts are useful starting points rather than
reductionist over-simplifications. Here, for example, is the ACL definition of ‘language’, which either explicitly or implicitly
informs all language teaching (Stern 1983).
Language
A human cognitive and communicative capability which makes it possible to communicate, to create and comprehend meaning, to build and sustain
relationships, to represent and shape knowledge, and to imagine, analyse, express and evaluate.
Language is described and employed:•

as code – comprising systems, rules, a fixed body of knowledge; for example, grammar and vocabulary, sound and writing systems•

as social practice – used to do things, create relationships, interact with others, represent the world and the self; to organise social systems andpractices in dynamic, variable, and changing ways•

as cultural and intercultural practice – means by which communities construct and express their experience, values, beliefs and aspirations•

as cognitive process – means by which ideas are shaped, knowledge is constructed, and analysis and reflection are structured(ACARA 2017c)

Table 2 below describes possible language learning activities which reflect the different aspects of knowing and being
able to use a language. It is not reductionist to use descriptions of key concepts to inform the selection and creation of
appropriate learning tasks, texts and experiences.
ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

POSSIBLE LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Codelearning past tense verb forms, adverbs of time, narrative structure through engagement with Greek fables

Social practice

introducing oneself to a class (mate) at a new school in Japan

Cultural and intercultural practiceanalysing the calendars of different cultural/linguistic groups, identifying and analysing important days and theunderlying values (Different states/territories in Australia and Germany)

Cognitive processdescribing and hypothesising about a book cover or an artwork using a See–Think–Wonder thinking routine

Table 2. Examples of learning activities illustrating the different aspects of the ACL definition of language.

Culture too is a broader concept within the ACL than the traditional Fs – food, facts, festivals, fashion and flags (Byrd,
2014). The ACL view of culture is as a ‘lens through which people see, think, interpret the world and experience [...]’ (ACARA,
2017c). Importantly, whereas previously language study involved learning about the other, about ‘foreign’ cultures, within
an intercultural framework both the familiar and new cultures are the objects of study. Scarino and Liddicoat (2009)
describe learning to be intercultural as encompassing ‘learning to understand how one’s own culture shapes perceptions of
oneself, of the world, and of our relationship to others’ (p. 21). In summary, teachers who are new to intercultural language
learning would be well served by engaging with key terms of the ACL glossary.

Why should I use picture story books to deliver the ACL?
The use of literature in language learning has a long tradition, beginning with the study of Classical Latin and continued
today in many university language departments (Richards & Rodgers, 2014). Its continued use in modern language teachingis well supported in the research and professional literature (Leal, 2015; Morgan & Rinvolucri, 1983; Collie & Slater, 1997;
Lazar, 1993; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). The rationale for the inclusion of literature in the form of picture story books inlanguages programs encompasses at least six main domains: linguistic, literacy, intercultural, social-emotional, knowledge
and political.

Picture Story Books and Linguistic Competence
From a linguistic perspective, texts ‘are central to curriculum development as all work in language learning can be seen as
textual work’ (ACARA, 2014, p.12). Pictures story books are samples of authentic language use. They are a particularly usefulsource of comprehensible linguistic input. The quantity of language is typically small and therefore manageable for beginning
additional language learners; the number of words in picture story books is generally between poetry and short stories on theliterary text continuum. The written text is supported by images, facilitating the making of meaning in the target language.

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Wordless picture story books are also excellent learning tools for promoting language output such as in the co-constructionof text (Early, 1991; Jalongo, 2002). Translations of familiar picture books enable learners to focus directly on the language
since the content is known, and research by Sneddon (2009) supports the use of dual language books, particularly as tools
to support learners’ home language.

Picture Story Books and Literacy Learning
Kern (2000) is a strong advocate for literacy-based language teaching. He argues that ‘foreign language learners can best
begin their exploration of another language and culture by reading, discussing, and writing texts. He does not regard reading
and writing simply as skills, but rather as ‘cognitive and social practices that provide learners access to new communities
outside the classroom, across geographical and historical boundaries’ (Kern 2000, p. 303).
Picture story books are a staple in many homes and most primary classrooms; thus their use in a languages classroom provides
an opportunity to simultaneously experience the familiar (picture books) and the unfamiliar – e.g. different text orientation(vertical, right to left), or different realisations of the same objects (e.g. Eric Hill’s character ‘Spot’ is ‘Flecki’ in German).
Finally, picture books are a recognised tool within a comprehensive first-language literacy program (e.g. Mallan, 2014).
Using picture story books in the additional languages classroom provides learners with additional opportunities to practiseand develop their literacy skills.

Picture Story Books and Intercultural Capability
According to Mallan, ‘[s]tory and storytelling are embedded practices in all cultures and have evolved over time from cavedrawings to digital stories’ (Mallan 2014, p. 10). Allan describes stories around historic events (e.g. the Second World War)as ‘acts of remembrance’ or ‘textual monuments’ with particular ‘sticking power’ (Allan 2014, p. 16). They are cultural
frames, acts of national identity which language learners need to understand as much as cultural practices like bowing
and using chopsticks. The text Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (Coerr, 1997) has provided a useful frame for Year
5 and 6 learners to look at the historical basis for Peace Day in Japan and identify similarities and differences with Anzac
Day in Australia (Truckenbrodt & Payne, 2012).
Thus, picture story books can also be regarded as cultural artefacts. Picture books from the target culture may display
overt cultural and linguistic differences through the directionality of the print, the orientation of the book, the subject
matter and/or the illustrations. Mallan (2014) argues that learners ‘need to read other countries’ stories about national,
personal and community identities to enlarge their cultural frames of reference and to reflect on how these stories sharesimilarities and differences to their own’ (p. 6). Scarino and Liddicoat (2009, p. 35) identify five main principles for developing
intercultural language learning:
•
•
•
•
•

active construction
making connections
interaction
reflection
responsibility

All of these can be realised through the adoption of carefully selected picture story books. Reading stories in anotherlanguage from another cultural group requires learners to be actively engaged in meaning-making; they notice and makeconnections with self, other texts and real-world experiences and interact with others about the language and the content.
They reflect on their reactions to characters and events and may develop empathy with things which were previously
unfamiliar (Mudiyanselage, 2014).

Social and Emotional Learning and Picture Story Books
Picture story books provide opportunities for social and emotional learning on at least three levels of engagement: withthe content of the books, with their potential to connect and affirm learners’ identities and experiences, and as a stimulus
to reflect on the L2 learning process. Picture story books, as examples of children’s literature, can ‘[develop] children’s

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ethical and empathic understanding of society and its people (Mallan, 2013, as cited in Mudiyanselage, 2014, p. 91). They
offer a vicarious emotional experience suitable for young people about even challenging and confronting topics, such as
the experience of Jewish children trapped in the Warsaw ghetto as portrayed in Hesse’s The Cats in Kransinski Square(Hesse, 2004). Given the multilingual, multicultural nature of Australian classrooms, picture books in other languages andabout other cultures also have the potential to make all learners feel included in schooling, if their experiences and realities
feature as part of the curriculum. Finally, the ‘Reflecting’ sub-strand of the ACL requires learners to think about theirreactions to intercultural exchange and the process of communicating in another language. Content descriptions for Year
5 and 6 Japanese are given in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Year 5 & 6 Japanese Content descriptions for the sub-strand Reflecting

The picture story book My Two Blankets (Kobald & Blackwood, 2014) or Judith Kerr’s fictionalised biography When Hitler
Stole Pink Rabbit (Kerr, 2009) are examples of texts which problematise the challenges of learning and using new languages.
Either could serve as a stimulus to discuss the languages, communication and identity nexus central to the ACL.

Acquiring Knowledge and Picture Books
Fiction and non-fiction picture books can deliver new knowledge from other areas of the curriculum in accessible, engaging
ways (e.g. Mallan & Cross, 2014; and Massey, 2014). They can be used to show different perspectives on the same event,such as the wombat’s and the humans’ perspectives on conservation (Frankel & Duncan, 2011, as cited in Massey, 2014);
and Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (Tan, 2006), a picture story book which illustrates the experience and impact of migration andis suitable for senior students and adults.

Political Uses of Picture Books
The hegemony of English and English literacy in the Australian educational context can marginalise other the learningand maintenance of other languages. Truckenbrodt and Slaughter (2016) have argued that a shared metalanguage andcommon classroom approaches to L1 and L2 language and literacy learning, appropriately nuanced and deployed, canbreak down the misconception that literacy resides exclusively in English and that meaning needs to be accessed via
English. It is politically important that stakeholders understand that ‘literacy work’ is done in all areas of the curriculum but
particularly through the learning of another language. When Languages and English/Classroom teachers can utilise thesame tools of the trade, such as a picture story book, and support student learning through similar pedagogic practices,then the place of Languages in the curriculum may cease to be contested and might possibly be expanded.

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Concluding remarks
This paper and the presentation it is based on was intended to encourage practising teachers to regard the advent of a new
curriculum such as the Australian Curriculum Languages as a catalyst for positive change rather than an imposition. This
paper familiarises teachers with the ACL framework and its theoretical underpinnings – intercultural language teaching– since these elements are regarded as essential for genuine curriculum change. I argue that a strong case can bemade for the use of picture books to enact the ACL; the rationale for picture books encompasses more than the obvious
linguistic, literacy and (inter)cultural reasons. Picture story books are an accessible, much-loved text type for learners andteachers. Using a picture story book as the starting point and frame for the design of a new unit of work is not only ‘doable’for teachers but will also afford them more professional growth and satisfaction than simply tinkering with the current
curriculum.

References
ACARA. (2014). Australian Curriculum: Languages Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum Design. Retrieved from http://apo.org.au/node/69788
ACARA. (2017a). ‘Version implementation advice’, viewed 02 April, 2017, http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/curriculum/overview
ACARA. (2017b). ‘Learning area - Structure’, viewed 02 April, 2017, http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/languages/structure
ACARA. (2017c). ‘Australian Curriculum Languages Glossary’, viewed 02 April, 2017, http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/languages/glossary
ACARA (2017d). ‘Japanese Foundation to Year 10 Curriculum’, viewed 02 April, 2017, http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/languages/japanese/
curriculum/f-10?layout=1
AGQTP. (2007). Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice. Modules and Discussion Papers available from http://www.iltlp.unisa.edu.au/
modules.html
Allan, C. (2014). ‘Remembering the past through picture books’. In K. Mallan (Ed.), Picture Books and Beyond (pp. 12–24). Newtown, NSW: Primary English
Teaching Association Australia.
ALPLP. (n.d.). Getting Started with Intercultural Language Learning - A Resource for Schools. Retrieved from http://www.asiaeducation.edu.au/docs/defaultsource/professional-learning-pdfs/gettingstartedwithintercultural.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Brown, H. D. & Lee, H. 2015. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Pearson.
Byrd, D. (2014). ‘Learning to Teach Culture in the L2 Methods Course’. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 11(1), 76–89.
Coerr, E. (1997). Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. London: Puffin Books.
Collie, J. & Slater, S. (1997). Literature in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Connor, J. (2011). ‘Why Curriculums Fall Over: The Politics of Innovation’. In L. Yates, C. Collins & K. O’Connor (Eds.), Australia’s Curriculum Dilemmas (pp.
261–75). Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press.
Cousins, L. (1999). Maisy’s Bedtime. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
Cousins, L. (2004). Mausi geht ins Bett. Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag.
Dellit, J. (2011). ‘The Quest for Quality and Equity in SA Curriculum’. In L. Yates, C. Collins & K. O’Connor (Eds.), Australia’s Curriculum Dilemmas (pp. 148–62).
Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. Diaz, A. (2012). ‘Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning: Is it possible to bridge the gap between policy andpractice?’ MLTAQ Journal 153: 30–36.
Early, M. (1991). ‘Using Wordless Picture Books to Promote Second Language Learning’. ELT Journal, 45(3), 245–51.
Gilbert, R. (2012). Curriculum Planning in a Context of Change: A Literature Review. Retrieved from http://curriculumplanning.vcaa.vic.edu.au/docs/defaultsource/resources-page/curriculum-planning-literature-review.pdf?sfvrsn=6Hesse, K. (2004). The Cats in Kransinski Square. New York: Scholastic Press.
Hill, E. (1980). Where’s Spot? London: Penguin Books.
Jalongo, M. R. (2002). ‘Using Picture Books to Support Emergent Literacy’. Early Childhood Education Journal 29 (3): 167–77.
Kern, R. (2000). Literacy and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kerr, J. (2009). When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. New York: Puffin Books.
Kobald, I. & Blackwood, F. (2014). My Two Blankets. New York: Houghton Mills Harcourt.
Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Larsen-Freeman, D. & Anderson, M. (2011). Techniques & Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lazar, G. (1993). Literature and Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leal, P. (2015). ‘Connecting Reading and Writing using Children’s Literature in the University L2 Classroom’. Reading in a Foreign Language 27(2), 199–218.
Liauw, J., Payne, S., Truckenbrodt, A., & Vimpani, K. (2014). The Mouse’s Marriage Wiki. Retrieved from https://themousesmarriage.wikispaces.com
Liddicoat, A. J., Scarino, A., Curnow, T. J., Kohler, M., Scrimgeour, A., & Morgan, A-M. (2007). An Investigation of the State and Nature of Languages inAustralian Schools. Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

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Liddicoat, A. J. & Scarino, A. (2013). Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Mallan, K. (Ed.) (2014). Picture Books and Beyond. Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.
Mallan, K. & Cross, A. (2014). ‘The Artful Interpretation of Science through Picture Books’. In K. Mallan (Ed.), Picture Books and Beyond (pp. 41–60). Newtown,
NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.
Massey, G. (2014). ‘Picturing Sustainable Futures’. In K. Mallan (Ed.), Picture Books and Beyond (pp. 25–40). Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teaching
Association Australia.
Morgan, J., & Rinvolucri, M. (1983). Once Upon a Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mudiyanselage, K. D. (2014). ‘Encouraging Empathy through Picture Books about Migration’. In K. Mallan (Ed.), Picture Books and Beyond (pp. 75–91).
Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.
Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2014). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scarino, A., & Liddicoat, A. (2009). Teaching and Learning Languages: A Guide. Carlton South, VIC: Curriculum Corporation.
Shinju, M. (2005). Mottainai Grandma. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Slaughter, Y., & Truckenbrodt, A. (2016). Languages and Literacies: Building Connections: Literacy based Lessons in Indonesian and Italian. Downloaded fromhttp://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/ResourcePackage/ByPin?pin=7RLGNR
Slaughter, Y., Hajek, J., Truckenbrodt, A., & Liauw, J. (2016). Dua orang utan yang lucu sekali [Two Very Silly Orangutans]: Resource package. Retrieved fromhttp://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/ResourcePackage/ByPin?pin=D8JG5X
Sneddon, R. (2009). Bilingual Books – Biliterate Children. London: Trentham Books.
Stern, H. H. (1983). Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tan, S. (2006). The Arrival. New York: Scholastic.
Truckenbrodt, A., & Payne, S. (2012). ‘Start with a Storybook’. Presentation at Modern Language Teachers’ Association of Victoria Conference, Melbourne.
Truckenbrodt, A., & Slaughter, Y. (2016). ‘Working from the Same Page: Languages, Literacy and EAL/D Teacher Cooperation’. Literacy Learning: The Middle
Years 24(3), 27–30.
VCAA. (2017). ‘Victorian Curriculum Foundation to 10 Curriculum Area Advice’. Viewed on 2 April 2017, http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Pages/foundation10/
viccurriculum/curriculum-area-advice.aspx
Yates, L. (2011). ‘Re-thinking Knowledge, Re-thinking Work’. In L. Yates, C. Collins & K. O’Connor (Eds.), Australia’s Curriculum Dilemmas (pp. 25–44). Carlton,
VIC: Melbourne University Press.

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Using creative andimaginative texts toteach Japanese
Natalie Pearce
Beechboro Christian School (WA)Introduction
The Japanese Second Language P-10 Scope and sequence was released in the middle of 2016 (SCSA, 2016). The inclusionof the Creating substrand and many references to creative and imaginative texts made it different to the curriculum that
had been used previously in WA. I wanted to investigate the potential benefits of using creative texts in our languages
classrooms, and to examine what the literature suggested as models for teaching with creative texts so that I could apply
this in my teaching. I also aimed to collate quality resources that I could use with my primary Japanese classes.
As a primary school Japanese teacher, I had often read simple Japanese picture books, sung Japanese children’s songs
and studied an occasional Japanese traditional folktale play with my students, but I wanted to do this in a more effective
and integrated way.

Background
Beechboro Christian School is a small primary school in a semi-rural setting on the fringe of the Perth metropolitan area.
There are just over 200 students at the school. I started teaching Japanese at this school in the middle of 2016 to all of thestudents from Year One to Year Six for one 30-minute class a week.

Definitions
The SCSA Glossary (2016) defines ‘imaginative texts’ as follows:
Their primary purpose is to entertain through their imaginative use of literary elements. They are recognised for theirform, style and artistic or aesthetic value. These texts include novels, traditional tales, poetry, stories, plays, fiction foryoung adults and children including picture books and multimodal texts such as film.
Regarding the Creating substrand, SCSA (2016) explains that:
Creating involves engaging with imaginative experience by participating in, responding to and creating a range of texts,
such as stories, songs, drama and music.

Looking at the Literature
The first article that I read on the topic of using creative texts was by Morgan (2011, pages 20-29), who wrote:NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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Stories can be introduced as texts to be listened to and read aloud, for familiarising learners with the sounds, rhythms,‘feel’ and forms of language, or as models for learning contextualised language use or to engage learners with theideas and issues addressed in the stories.
I could see that there were benefits to be gained by using creative texts for language teaching but wanted to have some
scaffolding or models to work with. The first model for using picture books to teach language that I came across was the‘Tell me’ approach by Chambers (1983), which is elaborated on by Mourao (cited in Bland, 2015, chapter 11). This model
encourages the students to participate in ‘authentic talk’ as they engage with the themes and ideas raised in a story. The
model involves three stages, each of which sets key questions to discuss with students. A fellow Japanese teacher andnative speaker, Junko Nichols, helped me to adapt and translate these questions into Japanese, as shown below.

Questions adapted from Mourao (cited in Bland, 2015)

The second model that I explored was ‘nine story steps for scaffolding through story and drama’ by Carol Read, as
elaborated by Bland (illustrated below). I used both these models to guide my use of stories and picture books with mystudents. I realised that if I really wanted to exploit a text for language learning I needed to revisit the story many times
with my students and guide them in different activities so that eventually they would be able to internalise and use thelanguage from the texts.
Cameron (2001, chapter 7) discusses the importance of choosing ‘quality’ stories so that the students can ‘enter theimaginative world that the story creates’:
Quality stories have characters and a plot that engage children, often the artwork is as important as the text in tellingthe story, and they create a strong feeling of satisfaction when the end is reached.
I realised that in the past I had read stories with very simple repetitive language in them to my students; now I wanted to
explore stories that still contained simple language but with deeper themes, plots and characters.
I came across a chapter by Janice Bland (2015, chapter 8) titled ‘Grammar Templates for the Future with Poetry for Children’
which outlines many benefits of using poetry and practical examples of this from her experience of teaching English asa Second Language. After reading this chapter on poetry I felt convinced that using simple poems could be beneficial forteaching Japanese to young learners as well. However, I realised that despite many years of studying Japanese I didn’tknow even one Japanese poem. I set out to find some Japanese poems that would be engaging and suitable to use withmy primary students.

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Read (2008) Scaffolding through story and drama (cited in Bland, 2015, chapter 10)

ProgramPoetryThe first poem that I taught my students was the Pikachu Haiku by Kerry Forrest. This poem was ideal for students as
it was about Pokemon – very popular with my students – and was short enough to be learnt by heart easily. Using asuggestion from Bland (2015, chapter 8) I incorporated actions into the retelling of the haiku.
ぴかちゅう は 		うみ で あそんでたのしそう
By Kerry Forrest

Here is Pikachu
He’s playing at the seaside
It looks like such fun

When I taught this Pikachu haiku to my students, I was pleased with how quickly they learnt the words and how much they
enjoyed it. We had an interesting discussion about the different word order, comparing the Japanese and English version(which maintains the traditional syllabic pattern), we clapped out and counted the syllables and discussed how Japanesetraditional haiku have references to nature and the seasons. The students were surprised to hear that Japanese doesn’t
have rhyme, which is something they readily associate with a poem. A few weeks after we had learnt this haiku I was
explaining the particle は (wa) to my students and how it tells us the topic of the sentence when one of my Year Three
students put their hand up with great enthusiasm to inform me that ‘that’s the wa in our Pikachu poem’. A couple of weeks
after I taught this poem, the Year Three teacher commented to me that she had heard her students chanting the Pikachu
haiku when she was out on duty at lunchtime.
An additional advantage of using the Pokemon-themed poem was that students were able to connect with things that theirpeers in Japan are interested in. Many of my primary school students enjoy collecting and exchanging Pokemon cards,
reading Pokemon books and playing the Pokemon Go game on their parents’ phones. Pokemon is also very popular withprimary age children in Japan. I would like to further explore how Pokemon stories and comics could be used to engage
my learners.

Adapting a picture book into a class drama
After seeing a Japanese translation by Japanese teacher Kathleen Duquemin of the English picture book You are (not) small
by Anna Kang, I purchased the book and looked at how I could use this with my classes. The dialogue in the book is centredaround two characters each labelling the other as big or small and arguing over this until a much smaller pink character
and a much larger green character arrive, which changes the perceptions of the first two of big and small. I added speech
bubbles so that the text all became dialogue; and after an initial reading I had my students act out the story as a drama.

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The students laughed as they acted out the text with dramatic actions. I was thrilled to hear Year One students starting to
use the language that they were exposed to in the text. For example, one of the students said to me, ‘I have a chiisai dog’.
I also asked the students the questions from the ‘Tell me’ approach and was surprised when one of the students told methat this story was just like him and his brother, who often argued about who was bigger and cleverer.
I was reminded of what I had read by Cameron (2015, chapter 7) that
Stories offer a whole imaginary world created by language, that children can enter and enjoy, learning language as they go.

Motivating learners and making learning visible to a wider audience
Beechboro Christian School is part of a wider network of schools in
Perth called the Swan Christian Education Association (SCEA). Under
the guidance of the SCEA Languages Consultant, Mariel Howard, anannual foreign languages performance contest has been set up called‘SCEA Vision’. At this event primary school and high school students fromthe eight SCEA schools perform songs, poetry or drama in a language
other than English. Some of the students perform in a language fromtheir background while others perform in a language they are learningat school or one that they simply have an interest in. From attending
and having my students participate in this event, I have seen students
excited and motivated to be using a language other than English. Last
year I taught my students the first verse of the Christmas song ‘Silent
Night’ in Japanese, which they sang at the annual school Christmas
Carols event. I enlisted the help of the music teacher, who also runs theschool choir, so that they could practise in music classes. The students
sang ‘Silent Night’ beautifully at the concert and I was thrilled whenthe music teacher told me that after the concert students from thechoir had approached her saying that they had so enjoyed singing inJapanese that they would like to learn a Japanese song for the choir tosing at SCEA Vision 2017!

Integrate with Cross Curricular Priorities
The Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2016) has three Cross-curriculum priorities that are designed to be incorporated acrossall of the subjects of the curriculum. When we were first becoming familiar with the draft ACARA Curriculum in 2015
my colleague Kaoru Tulloch and I wondered how we might incorporate the priority of Sustainability into our Japanese
program. We decided to run incursion workshops for our primary school classes teaching on the theme of mottainai, which
we termed ‘Learning about sustainability Japanese-style’. We read the picture book Mottainai Baasan by Mariko Shinju(2004) to the students and had them then create their own mottainai comics. We also adapted a mottainai song which wetaught the students with accompanying dance moves. The students also enjoyed having the opportunity to revise daily
routine verbs through a repetitive chant on mottainai. The students participated in ‘mottainai origami’ (making kabuto hatsfrom newspaper), ‘mottainai omocha’ (boomerang flying toys from recycled cereal boxes) and ‘mottainai furoshiki’ where
we wrapped up items in donated fabric. The Mottanai Baasan picture book, mottainai song and the chant provided rich
opportunities for language learning and cultural insights for our students.

Challenges
One of my biggest challenges in teaching Japanese is having only 30 minutes a week. In the table below, I outline otherfactors that can be difficult when using creative texts to teach Japanese, along with some suggestions for how thesemight be addressed.

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Conclusion
There are many possible benefits of using creative and imaginative texts, which include: motivating students, raising the
profile of language learning, supporting intercultural language learning, integrating with the cross-curricular sustainability
priority, and supporting language acquisition and learning. Following on from the success of my initial efforts to integrate
poetry into my primary Japanese program, I have collected a number of traditional haiku and modern poems written by
Japanese children which I am now using with my students. They are enjoying the cultural insights from these poems as
they start to acquire the new language that they are exposed to from studying them. I continue to collate new picture
books that I can use with my students and to look at new activities to engage the students. The majority of the literaturethat I read focuses on using creative texts to teach English as a Second Language, but I am hoping that there will be moreresources published with examples of how poems and picture books are used to engage students in learning Japanese.

References
ACARA (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority) (2016). Australian Curriculum. Available: acara.edu.au.
Bland, J. (ed.) (2015). Teaching English to young learners: critical issues in language teaching with 3-12 year olds. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forrest, K. (2015). Pikachu Haiku. Available at http://www.japanesejoy.com/wp-content/uploads/Pikachu-Haiku-1.pdf
Kang, A. (2015). You are (not) small. London: Hachette Children’s Group.
Morgan, A. (2011). Language, literacy, literature: Using storytelling in the languages classroom. Babel 46(2/3), 20-29.
SCSA (School Curriculum and Standards Authority, Government of Western Australia) (2016). Japanese: Second Language Scope and Sequence P-10.
Available at K10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au
Shinju, M. (2004). Mottainai baasan. Tokyo: Kodansha.

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45 minutes per week:
How the Australian
Curriculum is working
in a government primaryschoolKathleen Duquemin
Gardenvale Primary School (Vic)

Introduction
Most government primary schools have limited time for ‘specialist’ classes such as Japanese Second Language classes,
which means that primary Japanese teachers are required to cover aspects of the Australian Curriculum and meet all
Achievement Standards within a very limited time frame. Based on Implications for teaching, assessment and reporting- Australian Curriculum: Languages, the curriculum is written for 350 hours from Foundation to Year 6, or 1.25 hours per
week. According to a survey undertaken by the Japanese Language Teachers Association of Victoria (JLTAV) in 2008, themajority of primary schools have between 30 and 60 minutes per week allocated to Japanese. At Gardenvale Primary
School (GPS), the classes are 50 minutes per week. Effective classroom time is reduced to 40-45 minutes, however, forsenior classes (Years 3-6) who must walk 250 metres from their campus to the Junior Campus where these classes areheld. In addition to the relatively short class time, many primary language teachers experience significant interruptions totheir programs from extra-curricular activities such as year-level camps, Bike-Ed (Year 5 students undertake one full weekof activities focusing on bicycle education), incursions and school photographs.
To maintain a rigorous program and ensure ongoing student achievement, it is necessary to re-think the ‘normal’ structureof a curriculum and re-imagine the scope and sequence to overcome such hurdles.

Scope and Sequence
The scope and sequence for a primary school differs from that at a secondary school. Where most secondary textbooksalign with curriculum outcomes and provide scope and sequence within the structure of the textbook, primary language
programs are generally created by the language teacher and rely more on the school curriculum guidelines (e.g. integrated
curriculum focus) and the sequence outlined in each state’s interpretation of the Australian Curriculum. The Australian
Curriculum provides a very sound starting point for primary schools to develop a sequence that works for the abilitiesof their students and the time they have available. At GPS we teach from Prep through to Year 6, and while the linguistic
content is generally consistent, the topic and content can be easily changed according to the interests and overall abilityof the cohort.

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Authentic vs. Synthetic Texts
In the Scope and Sequence, there is a mix of both authentic Japanese texts (such as tongue twisters, songs, cafe menus,
絵本) and synthetic texts (created or modified specifically to suit language level of the students, such as translations ofEnglish Picture Books, weather reports, and instructions for The Amazing Race). In the earlier years, authentic Japanese
texts targeting our students’ linguistic ability are quite relevant developmentally – that is, they are written for young children
and therefore quite suitable to be used within the Early Years classroom. However, as students move through the school,
the number of authentic texts that suit students both developmentally and linguistically diminishes significantly – texts areeither too challenging or too babyish. It is for this reason that texts are often synthesised for higher primary students, either
by re-creating a known English text in Japanese or by modifying the language in a Japanese text.
2017 Gardenvale Primary School Japanese – Prep to Year 6 Scope and Sequence
SEMESTER 1SEMESTER 2

PREP

Greetings, colours, numbers Introduction to kanji
Songs and てあそび
Simple origami – classroom instructions
Using adjectives

Read /write kanji 山 川 火 水 木 林 森 Sentence structure ～が好きです ～をたべます/ました
Text focus – 尻尾の歌

YEAR 1

Kanji revision + new kanji
Mini-beasts
Making tables and Venn diagrams using Japanese
Related origami

Animal focus こぶた / たぬき / きつね / ねこ
Animal noises – Onomatopoeia
Possessive の わたし/ぼくのぺっとは ～ ですRead / write kanji 竹石犬馬大小上下中YEAR 2

Songs and tongue twisters (すももももも)
Hiragana in 10 weeks
Hiragana games – reading familiar words – colours and shapes

Text focus – Brown Bear
Reading hiragana words and phrases
Verbs – present and past tense
Particles は and を

YEAR 3Hiragana revision – introduction of ten ten
Text focus – One fish two fish
Small animal counters
Small つText focus – Where is the Green sheep
い and の adjectives (colours)
Reading focus

YEAR 4Time
School – subjects and timetable
Writing focus: ～ べんきょうします ～ が好きです。
Focus on furigana – blended sounds and extended vowels

Family – the river test
Forms of addressSong – わにのかぞく
Text – 大きなカブ – (create and perform a play)

YEAR 5

Prepositions – kanji and furigana
House – rooms and household items – cockroach game
Sentence structure: ～の～に～います/ありますTransport – particles で and にSentence writing – The amazing race
Fashion unit (short unit) clothing verbs
Adjectives and nouns

YEAR 6Pet café – menus – food adjectives
Cup Noodles – make a commercial

Weather reports 今日の天気は～でしょう。
Temperature 最高/最低 気温は～でしょう。
End of year celebration – watch Japanese film

One benefit of using known English texts is that students are often already familiar with and have fond memories of thestory (for example, well-known texts such as The Diary of a Wombat, or One Fish Two Fish) creating additional inbuilt
supports for reading comprehension. A text does not just have to be a book in the primary classroom, but is often a song,
tongue twister, video clip of a Japanese ad (such as the すしローCMs), a haiku or even a puppet or an image.

Kanji – then hiragana
At GPS, students are taught kanji in Prep and Year 1, and hiragana is then introduced from Grade 2. Our rationale for this isthat students in Prep and Year 1 have not yet developed their phonemic awareness even in English. As a result, the hiragana
seem like intangible squiggles to them, not connected to any sound or meaning that they know or understand. Kanji, on theother hand, seems tangible, even logical, and our children enjoy it. Many of the kanji are recognisable through their shapeand, as they represent meaning rather than sound, it seems there are more connections for the students to make, which
reinforces their understanding and memorisation. In addition, it enables us to introduce students to the concept of a symbol
representing meaning—a great introduction to the learning of character languages.

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When students are introduced to hiragana in Year 2, they have good phonemic awareness, and they have already acquired
a significant vocabulary, so the symbols are quickly connected to known sounds and words and students become confident
in their ability to recognise and read them. Once students have begun to learn hiragana, the shift is quickly made to reading
whole words. Students are reminded that learning all the hiragana off by heart can be a challenge and that this is NOT theirgoal. They are required to find the information (using a hiragana chart or table) to be able to read, and they are expected
to learn the words that are related to the text they are studying. This makes hiragana relevant and its acquisition moreachievable for our students, and it reduces the likelihood of them disengaging due to the challenge of remembering 46
characters.

Whole-year breakdown of curriculum
Rather than a standard term-by-term curriculum, at GPS the curriculum is broken into short and long units within asemester. An example is below:
Semester outline
TERM 1

short unit
Revise kanji/hiragana
Cultural focus
Set expectations

TERM 2long unit
Major linguistic focus
10-12 week unit – begin with intensive oral/aural introduction
Explicit character study (P-1 漢字, 2-6 ひらがな)
Explicit grammar – particles, counters, verb conjugations
Text study (picture book, song, tongue twister, video clip)
Assessment

short unit
Games (applying new learning)
Short unit (3-4 weeks)(report writing)This type of planning allows learning to be continuous throughout the semester, anticipates the frequent interruptions that often
occur within the first term, and takes into account the need to assess large numbers of students and write reports often wellbefore the end of term 2. Through beginning the year with a short unit, students usually have a fun start to the language classes
and are quickly engaged; then, once interruptions have lessened toward the end of term 1, they begin a more focused unit oflearning with a positive attitude. This unit carries over from term 1 and is picked up quickly at the beginning of term 2, and thestudents are able to apply themselves fresh from the holidays. Assessment is usually completed by week 5, giving the teacher
considerable time to make corrections and write informed and relevant reports for all students. At GPS there are in excess of 650
students, so assessment and reporting require a significant amount of time.

Short Units of Work
The outline above mentions short and long units of work. Short units refers to knowledge that does not require a full unitof work to teach. This may be because it is a very small piece of knowledge, or a word/phrase that will be used frequently
and therefore will be learned through its use rather than requiring a formal lesson.
Examples of short units of work that are used in our classroom include:•••

Colours – these are introduced quickly through a song, which is often repeated each week. In addition, tongue
twisters such as 赤パジャマ、黄パジャマ、茶パジャマ and 赤まきがみ、青まきがみ、黄まきがみ further reinforce
this learning, as well as the emphasis on colours within texts such as Brown Bear by Eric Carle, or One Fish Two
Fish by Dr Seuss.
Big numbers – ‘おくまんせんひゃくじゅういち’ – a great lead in to shopping units and a lot of fun for older students
who like the challenge of figuring out how to read the numbers. This short unit includes students creating their own‘rap’ version of a song using the word ‘okumansenhyakujuuichi’.
Particles – such as the possessive ‘の’. This is introduced prior to the 鬼のパンツ song in Grade 2 through a very
simple role play, where two people fight over one toy, stating over and over ‘の, it’s mine’.

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•

•

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Tastes – おいしい、あまい、からい and すっぱい are introduced in Prep and then used to describe the morning
snack each week. Introduced through mnemonic stories (e.g. My Grandma, Oi shi can cook!) and used weekly,
these words and phrases become part of our functional language within the classroom.
Furigana is introduced around Year 3 in conjunction with an introduction to counters. The students are alreadyfamiliar with kanji and hiragana, and it is a natural progression to show them how they co-exist within a text toprovide both meaning and pronunciation.
います/あります is an important aspect of student understanding but does not require a long period of time tounderstand. Students learn quickly that there is a difference between the two, and spend a week or two discovering
what belongs in each category. This is a fun unit of work as students bring in concepts such as bacteria, dust, andother tricky items to be classified. After this unit, the students can use both います and あります with confidence,clearly understanding the difference.

Long Units of WorkLong units of work generally are based on a text and include new character learning (hiragana, use of ten-ten, blends,
writing in grids, etc), new grammar (particles, verb conjugation, sentence structure) and summative assessment. Theselong units start with an intensive aural/oral focus during which time students become familiar with the vocabulary andsentence structure that will be introduced, and they often include a song to provide additional pronunciation support. The
grammar is introduced early in the unit through a ‘Grammar Hunt’, where students are challenged to find patterns within
the sentences for themselves and try to work out the rationale for these patterns. In allowing the students to discover theirown grammatical understanding, this learning becomes much more powerful.
All character knowledge, grammar and particles are then explicitly taught with opportunities for students to seek clarification,
so that before the text is introduced the students are confident in their understanding of the language. Throughout longunits of work, students are constantly exposed to the words and sentences through flash cards, games such as karuta,
word searches and other activities, and each lesson begins with a quick revision of the words and/or sounds and their rules.
Longer units that have worked well within our classroom have included:•

鬼のパンツ
Introducing the possessive のCultural focus on 鬼
Describing using adjectives
Oral performance of the song 鬼のパンツ
Substituting words within a sentence structure: だれのパンツですか。～のパンツです。

•

Minibeasts
Kanji 大 小Classify insects according to their size/speed using a Venn diagram.
Using oral language to describe, e.g. 天道虫は早いです。カタツムリ
は大きいです。

•

The Amazing Race
Based on the reality TV show, students learn the use of particles
and sentence structure to obtain meaning from text and discover
the race’s ultimate destination.
Students use particles に and で with 行きます to re-create theirown leg of the Amazing Race.

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS•32

The River Test
Based on the IQ test and introducing long vowel sounds, formal/
informal forms of address, counters for people, using furigana, using とStudents have to solve the puzzle then describe the solution, first orally
then in writing.

Expectations
There are a number of differing opinions about what is the optimal age for language learners, and around how we define
the range of years that represents the Critical Period for language acquisition. There are few, however, who would doubtthat young learners are very competent when it comes to acquiring a second language. This has implications for developing
curriculum for primary students.
Rather than ‘dumbing down’ the linguistic goals, we need to recognise that younger students are capable language learners
and this should be reflected in our expectations of the students’ second language acquisition.

Assessment
We find that one of the most challenging aspects of the primary language classroom is assessment and reporting. As
suggested earlier, the program is structured in such a way that there is sufficient time to give assessment, complete
corrections, and write the often 600+ reports prior to submission for proof reading, etc. Assessment itself also needs tobe re-imagined to ensure ongoing formative and summative assessment are built into the short/long unit planning being
described in this paper.
Formative assessment at GPS is built in to every lesson plan, from the flash cards at the beginning of the class to thegames and team activities that form a significant part of the application of learning. Without ongoing formative assessment
throughout each class, it would be very difficult to maintain expectations and engagement—one of the most motivating
factors in our classroom is student achievement.
Summative assessment is more formally structured, and often comprises checklists and tick boxes. While it sounds
quite daunting at times, it can really be quite simple. From Prep to Year 6, for example, students respond to the roll callin Japanese, and the question asked reflects the learning focus of that year level. Year 1 students (learning about taste
and food) might be asked『昨日の夜、何を食べましたか。』 and the student response develops over the course of thesemester from 『～を食べました。』 to 『おいしいパスタとサラダと甘いアイスクリームを食べました。』 by the endof the unit of study. In this way, it is very simple and clear to see which students are able to understand the sentence
structure, the word order, and the concept of substitution of vocabulary in order to create new sentences. In addition, thelanguage they are using, while at times including English words where they do not have the Japanese equivalent, is very
real and being used in a communicative way.
The use of pegs on clothes is another easy form of assessment of oral language and works particularly well in assessingclassroom and functional language. Students are challenged to use the target phrase in context, and when this is done
they are able to place the clothes peg back in the tub. This also allows students who are less confident to come up andspeak quietly directly with the teacher to demonstrate their understanding, without an audience.

がんばって
While the Australian Curriculum is academically rigorous and sets the expectations of student learning quite high, it isachievable, even in one 45-minute class a week. And not only is it achievable, it can be fun. I encourage all teachers to rethink, re-structure and embrace the challenge of the Australian Curriculum, and be confident that it can be taught – even
within the limits of the primary classroom.

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Integrating thelearning of language
and culture acrossthe primary curriculum
Susan Palmer
Balgowlah Heights Public School (NSW)Introduction
Through the medium of language and culture the Japanese program at Balgowlah Heights Public School aims to provide
experiences that connect and integrate learning across the curriculum. This requires a flexible and collaborative approach, working
closely with students, parents and classroom teachers to ensure the learning has purpose, is relevant, meaningful and fun.
In these formative years of schooling, as educators our goal is to develop the minds of our students and provide thenecessary knowledge, life skills and experiences that will enable them to face the challenges ahead in a diverse, rapidlychanging and increasingly complex global society.
An integrated Languages program that exposes students to different ways of being and provides many and varied
experiences can achieve substantive outcomes by enhancing and complementing learning across the curriculum. There
are obvious limitations to what can be achieved in terms of language acquisition given the lack of face-to-face time anddedicated teaching space. Despite this, I believe it is still possible to teach successfully by ensuring the facilitation of four
key elements, Communication, Connection, Purpose and Experience, each to be explained in the course of this paper.

Background
Balgowlah Heights PS is located near Manly on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. The school has over 700 students in attendance.
Japanese language has been taught at the school since the early 1990s, commencing at a time when Japan was at the height of
its economic success and demand for Japanese language at its peak. I have been employed as the Japanese teacher since 2004.
The student population then was just 450. Currently in 2014, I am responsible for teaching and assessing 640 students from
Kindergarten to Year 5. I teach 25 lessons for approximately 25 minutes, in 25 different classrooms with 25 different teachers
over a period of 3 days. Students have a lesson just once a week. In NSW public schools Languages education is not compulsory
and my position in the school is supported and financed by the parent community.
Over the past 10 years the aim has been to develop a Japanese language and cultural program that fosters a collaborative,
intercultural and integrative approach to teaching and learning. In providing the program I bring 30+ years of Japan-related
anecdotal experience, having lived and worked in Japan for several years and as well as working for Japanese organisations
in Australia prior to marriage and children.
It is important to emphasise these are my own views and based entirely on personal experience and not on any academic research.

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS34

The key elements
Communication
Communication is about building and maintaining positive relationships with all key players within the school – the executive,
staff, parents and students.
An executive team, in particular a school principal who actively promotes and supports languages in the primary system, isessential. Their enthusiasm for language learning and encouragement validates the program and gives it ‘status’ within theschool. Involving the executive team, keeping them informed of the program content, and providing opportunities where
they can witness the Japanese program in action (for example, performances, festivals, competitions and visual displays)
are all very important.
Likewise, engaging the classroom teachers by discussing and sharing the teaching programs and lesson plans, working
collaboratively and providing feedback, all help to foster ongoing support. Involving the classroom teacher in the lessons
and having them engage and learn alongside their students is motivating and fun for everyone.
Keeping parents informed is also essential, particularly in my case where my position in the school is dependent on
their support. Ensuring they understand the aims and objectives of the Japanese program and don’t have unrealistic
expectations of me or of their children is important. Many of our parents are themselves monolingual and therefore don’tnecessarily understand that the fact that their child will not be a fluent speaker of Japanese language after six years oflearning in primary school is not to say they won’t have engaged in valuable and important learning and experiences.
At the beginning of each year, time is made to speak to all Kindergarten parents to outline the aims and objectives of the
program, giving them insight into the type of activities their children will be involved in and what we hope to achieve. All
new families that join the school at a later date are also provided a letter of welcome, a program outline and informationon the language content taught to date. They are reassured that their child will not be disadvantaged should they not have
had previous exposure to the language and culture. Parents are also kept informed via the school newsletter, or directly,
of upcoming extracurricular activities or events (for example, manga and art exhibitions, movies, festivals, performancesand Japan-related competitions).
In addition, at the end of each reporting period letters are written and distributed to all parents providing a summary ofactivities, the content covered during the semester and what students are expected to know. Lastly, it is also important totake the time, either before or after school, at school events or when the opportunity arises, to be visible and communicate
face to face with parents as this builds their trust and confidence. These are also opportunities for advocacy and receiving
their feedback.
Building a positive relationship with the students and striving to ensure that their needs and interests are catered for isprobably the most important recipe for achieving success in the Japanese classroom. If you can demonstrate that you
care, value and respect them as people, are able to build a rapport and they like you, then you can teach them anything.
They will want to learn and want to please you. It is necessary to be always being upbeat, positive, smiling and making eye
contact with every student to commence every lesson, even if it is the ninth class for the day. Stopping to chat to themat recess and lunchtime, arranging extra activities, having a joke, being involved, interested and respectful is essential tomaintaining that relationship. It takes time and energy but the benefits are tangible. There are always students who arechallenging and difficult, but even in circumstances when dealing with inappropriate behaviour, it important to take time toreach an understanding and a solution to any issues that have arisen.

Connection
Connecting existing knowledge and experience with language content is another essential element to achieving success inthe classroom. Languages cannot be taught in isolation but must connect to all learning areas of the curriculum, whether
it be maths, science, history, geography or even art. A foreign language and culture provides the perfect medium forconsolidating knowledge, enabling connections to be made and meaningful learning to happen.

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To have an awareness and knowledge of what is happening in the school and in classrooms is paramount to facilitating
language integration. For example, I teach ‘time’ in Year 3 after or concurrently with the learning occurring in the maths
class. By doing it in the target language you are also consolidating what has already been taught. I also introduce themonths, the date and the seasons at the same time as that learning is occurring in the Year 1 classroom.
Knowing your students and what they are learning across the different year levels and in individual classrooms can ensure
the effective integration of the languages program. This does, however, require time, flexibility and constant adaptation. Itmeans regularly attending year-level meetings where student needs can be discussed, and I can work collaboratively withclassroom teachers and be involved in the planning process.
A languages program that demonstrates cross-curriculum connections and reflects an intercultural and holistic approachcombined with a sound knowledge and understanding of your students can greatly enhance, or ‘value add’, learning
outcomes.

PurposeTo achieve success in the classroom, what is taught and how must have a purpose for it to have value and meaning.
Students need to understand what they are learning and why as well as how they will learn and for what purpose. To cite
an example, in Year 5 students are asked to research, discuss and compare food etiquette at home and in Japan. Students
often find this interesting and very useful as many are not aware of what constitutes appropriate food etiquette andtable manners in their own culture, and of course everyone’s experience will differ depending on what social and cultural
background they have come from. Many also do not know how to use chopsticks properly, nor do they have any conceptof appropriate etiquette surrounding their use. Hence teaching food etiquette is practical and has purpose.
Teaching language and cultural concepts that are relevant, and connecting it to what they know already, helps I believe todevelop an understanding of self, others and the greater community in which we live. It teaches students to value, respect
and appreciate difference between cultures. I think it also helps develop an awareness and sensitivity that our attitudes
and our actions can impact and affect others.
When determining what we teach and how, it is worthwhile, where possible, to engage the students in the decision process,thus empowering them to take responsibility for their own learning. This has become increasingly possible with the useof technology, the internet, Youtube and language learning applications. We as teachers no longer need to teach but canstep back and act as facilitators in the education process. In Year 5 at Balgowlah Heights students have the opportunity
to do a PIP (personal interest project) where they are encouraged to focus on an area of Japanese language and cultureof interest to them and to make a presentation to the class. They are then peer assessed following set criteria. This has
proven to be very motivating for students. I too learn from them and am often in awe of the effort, quality and standardof what I now refer to as ‘teach the teacher’ presentations. Examples have included detailed models and explanations ofJapanese architecture, gardens and Mount Fuji, an origami zoo, manga drawing lessons, Japanese dance performanceschoreographed by the students themselves, karate and ninja demonstrations (complete with outfits and homemade ninja
weapons), Japanese cooking and ikebana demonstrations, Harajuku fashion, robotics and homemade kimonos. There
have even been students who had previously underachieved in many areas of their schooling but have excelled in their PIP
presentations. In one presentation a normally very quiet and introverted young boy was able to impress and amaze us allwith his incredible knowledge of the Pokemon phenomenon, simply because Pokemon was his passion. The reaction fromhis peers did wonders for his self-esteem and confidence, and his engagement in school life improved.

Experience
I have discussed communication, connection and purpose as essential for achieving success in the primary classroom.
The last of the key elements is experience. For this there is no substitute. Experience enables deeper, richer and meaningfullearning to happen. When evaluating the program at the end of the students’ six-year ‘Japanese journey’ at Balgowlah
Heights, I ask them to recall what they have learned, remembered and enjoyed. Not surprisingly, it is always the experiential
learning that has had the greatest impact on student knowledge and language development.

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To cite some examples from Kindergarten, it is the classroom full of helium balloons when learning colours and decorating
the bamboo tree with their wishes for Tanabata (Star Festival) that the students remembered. It is dancing the tankobushi(folk dance) with their parents under the kohaku (red and white striped celebratory bunting), eating yakisoba (fried noodles)and competing with their class wearing their team hachimaki (symbolic headband) at the undōkai (sports festival) in Year
1 when learning about celebrations. It is not the token lantern they could have made or the Youtube clip they could havewatched, it is the actual event they experienced that they remember. In Year 2, it is the making of the kakejiku (hanging
scroll) and learning of Matsuo Bashō’s journey around Japan writing haiku poetry they recall from lessons about theimportance of the seasons and connecting with nature. In Year 3, it is the Japanese play and performing a traditional
folk tale at the drama festival and in front of the school. It is the making and painting of our kaminendo daruma (paper
clay figurine) when learning symbols of identity and goal setting or creating amazing patterns doing shibori (traditional
dyeing technique). It is the meditative art of creating stylized pictures with ink and brushes doing sumie (ink painting) andintroductory speeches in Year 4 as they pretended to be exchange students in Japan. It may be the making and sellingof washi paper products for the spring fair or the trip to the Japanese restaurant on the local bus at lunchtime to put ourknowledge of Japanese etiquette into practice or the sumo competition in the sand pit that makes the learning of thelanguage and the culture come to life.
The most worthwhile and valuable experience of all, however, is the study tour to Japan. Below I have extracted passages
from a letter to the school principal from a parent whose son participated in the Japan Study Tour:We would like to formally let you know how much our son John appreciated the Japan Study Tour… Perhaps the bestindicator of his enjoyment of the trip was John expressing an interest in seeing more of Japan … and not just Tokyo
Disneyland. … John returned from the tour raving about the things he had seen… We believe that the heightened senseof curiosity and enthusiasm for learning he is exuding this term can be traced directly to the stimuli the tour provided…
In summary, the trip was a brilliant cultural learning experience. John has returned a more confident young man with anenhanced understanding of what the world has to offer…
In the words of Confucius, ‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.’ There is only so much we canlearn from a textbook and in a formal classroom setting. Language and culture is real and therefore must be lived.

Conclusion
It is in the primary years or earlier that we should be placing more emphasis on actively promoting Languages teaching
and learning. Young children acquire language naturally and without fear or prejudice. I see what can be achieved in lessthan 30 minutes once a week teaching Japanese and the enjoyment children get from learning language. It is encouraging
also when made aware of how well our past students perform in their high school language programs because of theexperience they had at Balgowlah Heights PS. I often lament to think what could be achieved if languages were morevalued and more time allocated to the teaching and learning of Languages in the NSW primary curriculum. Hopefully thiswill change with the introduction of the new Australian Curriculum and as the need arises for us as Australians, individuallyand collectively, to compete on increasingly connected rapidly changing world stage where the educated majority canalready communicate in more than one language.
To have the opportunity to teach in a primary school is extremely fulfilling and rewarding. The key to achieving successin a Language classroom is not just what is taught and how but also that it is perceived positively and valued in the wider
community. It is important to communicate aims and objectives, to work collaboratively, to be actively involved in theschool and to develop an integrative and experiential program that focuses on students’ needs and supports and connects
the learning across the whole curriculum.

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Postscript
This paper was written four years ago. It details comments I expressed following a presentation given at the NSJLE in 2014as a primary Japanese language teacher in NSW. Fast-forward four years, and despite having become more aware ofimportant educational research such as Professor John Hattie’s Visible Learning (2012) – which sees us now all versed in
the rhetoric of ‘Learning Intentions and Success Criteria’ – I still believe that what is written in this paper is as pertinent today
as it was in 2014.
None of it is new and much of it has been said before. Today, I/we may be more experienced and better informed asteachers. But the key to ultimate success for us all is be to be able to adapt to the needs of society. We must strive to develop
and maintain positive relationships, ensure important connections are made in context and provide relevant, purposeful andvaluable experiences that give our students the best opportunities to succeed in the future.
It takes enormous courage and fortitude to be an educator/teacher today. Whilst we can easily get caught up in the vexatious
and demanding daily expectations placed upon us, we must not lose sight of the value and importance of our work, butinstead rejoice in the difference we can make and what we can do for others.

References
Hattie, J. 2012. Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. Abingdon: Routledge.

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ウェラーズヒル小学校における日本語バイリンガルプログ
ラム実施とその成果について(The Wellers Hill State
School Japanese Bilingual
Program: implementation
and results)
橋本琢 ジョン・ウェブスター
Taku Hashimoto & John Webster

はじめにブリスベン市内から車で７分ほど離れたところにバイリンガル教育を行っているウェラーズヒル小学校があります。この小学校で２０１４年から始まった日本語バイリンガルプログラムは、現在３８０名の生徒を有し、生徒数は年々増加の一途を辿っています。プログラムに参加する子ども達のほとんどが英語を話す家庭の子どもであり、残りの１割は片親が日本人で、両親とも日本人という家庭は２組しかありません。本稿では、このバイリンガルプログラムの概要と成果を述べ、今後の課題に言及したいと思います。

バイリンガルプログラムの概要
このバイリンガルプログラムは、幼児期における言語習得は、脳細胞の活性化、脳神経回路再形成（Neuroplasticity）(Bialystok, Craik & Luk、2012; Carlson & Meltzoff、2008; Miyake、2000; Rodriguez-Fornells et al.、2002)、認知症の防止(Bialystok et al.、2004)、そして母語である英語力向上が期待できるということから始まりました。プログラム
は、CLIL(Content and Language Integrated Learning)の手法を使い(Coyle, Hood & Marsh、2010) 、一日の授業の半分ずつを日本語と英語それぞれで勉強し、「日本語（国語）」以外の科目はすべてオーストラリアで定められたカリキュラ
ムに則って作成されています。

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算数、理科、HASS(Humanities and Social Science)注1の単元はすべて日本語と英語で分け合い、子ども達は同じ内容を双方の言語で同時に勉強することはありません。次の年には前年勉強した単元を交差し、子ども達は前年日本語で勉
強した単元を今度は英語で復習するという方式でカリキュラムがデザインされています。
当初、母語の英語もままならない子ども達が第二言語を習得するプログラムへの入学に抵抗を示す保護者もいましたが、プログラム開始半年前から保護者に定期的な説明会を開催し、バイリンガル教育のメリット、そして本校の指針を説明し徐々に保護者達からの理解や指示を得ることになりました。
２０１４年、バイリンガルプログラムの初日には盛大にパレードを開催し、校長からの説明を受けた後、子ども達は英語と日本語の先生達から教室内のルール、授業中のルール、教師達に対してのルール、学校のルールの説明を受けました。授業が始まり、各々教室に戻ると日本語の先生達は通常の会話スピードで授業を進めました。
１、２週間もすると、子ども達の耳も慣れ、先生達の指示も一つずつ段々と理解していきました。
本校では、子ども達はただ単に日本語を第二言語として勉強しているだけではありません。日本の伝統文化にも触れる機会がふんだんにあります。例えば、節分の時は鬼が教室に来て豆まきをしたり、皆で恵方巻を作って食べたり、雛祭りの時は七段飾りのお雛様を見学し、子どもの日には兜を飾り、七夕の際は短冊に日本語で願い事を書いて、笹の葉に吊るします。
日本文化の価値観を学ぶことも大切にしています。特に長幼の序を大切にする意味から、目上の人に敬意を示すため、
校長先生、教頭先生、学校訪問者が教室に訪れた際には必ず起立し、号令をかけ着席します。また、他の教室に出入りする際は「失礼します」と言い、フルーツを食べるおやつの時間には必ず皆一斉に「いただきます」と言います。このように、日本文化を通じた国際理解教育にも力を注いでいます。
なお、本校においては保護者の為に無料の日本語授業を行っていて、子ども達だけではなく学校の地域、コミュニティ
に対しても日本語の普及に力を注いでいます。そして２学期に一度の授業参観日には、保護者が授業を見学する機会を設けています。保護者は、自分の子どもが日本語の授業についていっているのか、また、子どもの伸長度はどうか、という不安を授業を実際に見てみることで、取り除くことができます。

成果と展望
当学校にはRicohのインタラクティブホワイトボードが常設され、Wifi 環境も完備し、テクノロジーやコンピュータが自由に使える学習環境が整っています。これにより４年生からはiPadを駆使して、数々の日本語のアプリを使い、日本語のタイピングを練習する時間を設け、ゆくゆくはプログラミングやコーディングの授業を行い、バイリンガル教育とSTEM教育の融合を図ろうと考えています。またRicohとの提携により、テレカンファレンス用機器のUnified Communication
Systemを譲り受け、東京都中野区立緑野小学校との間で国際交流授業も行っています。
緑野小学校の他にも現在定期的に山梨県南アルプス市立白根飯野小学校ともスカイプを通じ国際交流授業を行っています。その模様は同県の地元テレビ局や新聞社からの取材を受け、県内外で話題を呼びました。

注１

日本の社会科にあたる

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また、本校と同様のバイリンガルプログラムを実施している東京都町田市にある私立玉川学園とも 情報交換を目的とした連携をとる姿勢で双方が合意し、今後、本校の子ども達が日本を深く理解し、関わっていけるような国際交流活動をはじめ、交換留学をも視野に入れた関係構築を考えています。
昨年のNHKで本校の取組みが放送された後、東京都、広島市、京都市の教育委員会から視察の申し入れを受けました。視察後、バイリンガルプログラムの子ども達の日本語力、英語力、適応力の素晴らしさに驚嘆したという報告を受けました。
２０１６年には、3年生になった本校バイリンガルプログラム一期生の子ども達がNAPLANテストを受験し、結果、６０％以上の子ども達が上位の成績を残しました。バイリンガルプログラムに参加していない一般プログラムの子ども達の成績と比較をしても、より良い成績を残しました。つまり、
１００％英語で授業を受けている子ども達より、５０％のみ英語で授業を受けている子ども達の方が成績が良かったということです。兼ねてから子ども達の脳細胞の活性化、脳神経
回路形成、そして毎日行われる日本語と英語の行き来、つまり、教育のコードスイッチング体験により母語向上の成果が見られ始めたことを示しています。
NAPLANテストの中で、なかでも著しく一般プログラムの子ども達との大きな差が見られたのが算数のテスト結果です。バ
イリンガルプログラムでは、２年生の２学期から計算能力向上、数字に対する恐怖症の払拭の為、毎日１０分から１５分間
そろばん授業を取り入れていて、その成果が顕著にNAPLANのテストに反映されたと思われます。２年生の終わりまでには４桁までの足し算と２桁までの暗算、３年生は６桁までの足し算と引き算、３桁までの暗算とフラッシュ暗算を取り入れ、４年生の終わりまでに６桁の掛け算と４桁の暗算、２桁のフラッシュ暗算をできるよう目標を掲げています。
来年（２０１８年）の３月にはバイリンガルプログラムの一期生が日本へ修学旅行に行く予定です。４２名の子ども達、２５名の保護者、１１名の教職員、計７８人という大所帯で日本に向かいます。修学旅行中はホームステイの経験も組み込
み、子供達が日本での生活を体験し、より深く日本の文化、社会、生活習慣、学校行事等を理解し、日本人との交友関係を築き、更なる言語習得への興味や意気込みを示してくれるように期待しています。

今後の課題
この３年間でバイリンガルプログラムの子ども達は順調に日本語を習得し、尚且つ母語の英語の理解力、読解力も当プ
ログラムに参加していない子ども達のそれと比べ、明らかに優位であると感じ取れます。この子供達が６年生を卒業した
後、引き続き日本語を学んでいけるような中学高校のバイリンガルプログラムの創設の誘致が今後の課題となります。そして義務教育である１０年生を修了した翌年には大学進学への活路を見出すため、バイリンガルプログラム専用のEarly
Tertiary Course注2を本校近辺の大学に創設してもらうよう促しています。その道筋を作り、子ども達が小中高大までの一貫性のあるバイリンガル教育を受けられるようになることで初めて本プログラムが成功したことになるでしょう。

注2

早期の大学進級コース

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参考文献
Bialystok, E., Craik, F., Klein, R. & Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging and cognitive control: evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging, 19:
290-303.
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16 (4): 240-250.
Carlson, S. & Meltzoff, A. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in children. Developmental Science, 11 (2): 282-298.
Coyle, D., Hood, P. & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and theircontributions to complex ‘frontal lobe’ tasks: a latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41: 49-100
Rodriguez-Fornells, A., Rotte, M., Heinze, H. J., Nösselt, T., & Münte, T. F. (2002). Brain Potential and functional MRI evidence for how to handle two languages
with one brain. Nature, 415:1026-1029.

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Japanese media studies:a Year 10 CLIL program
Kelly Harrison
San Sisto College, Brisbane Catholic Education (Qld)

Introduction
The purpose of the presentation on which this paper is based was to educate other teachers about the practicalities of
implementing a CLIL program and to highlight the ways that CLIL may enhance Japanese teaching and learning acrossa variety of school contexts. My intention was for teachers who attended my presentation to leave the room with theconfidence to attempt even just one CLIL lesson and to then build an online network of teachers interested in teaching
Japanese CLIL programs. ‘The price of admission’ to the online community was to commit to planning for and teaching atleast one CLIL lesson and then sharing experiences with the group online. My presentation focused on my experiences in
implementing a Year 10 Japanese Media Studies CLIL program at my school, San Sisto College.

Background
San Sisto College is a Catholic girls school in Brisbane, with approximately 700 students. The school offers both Japaneseand Italian. Students are required to undertake two years of compulsory Languages study in Year 7 and 8, in their chosen
language. The Japanese department runs a three-week Japanese Immersion tour every two years and there is an Italy
Trip every three years. At the time of my presentation, Languages was experiencing a growth period at the college and myintroduction of a CLIL program capitalised on this growth. The Year 10 Japanese Media Studies course (run for the first timein 2016) was the product of approximately two years of research into and experimentation with CLIL. Conditions overall
were favourable for the introduction of a new course. I was blessed to work with a Languages-focused Principal for theyears leading up to this. Logistically, conditions were also favourable. For the first time during my tenure at the college we
had two Year 10 Japanese classes for 2016. This allowed for students to opt in to the CLIL program and for there to still bea ‘standard’ Year 10 Japanese course running on the same timetable line. Much of the literature I encountered and staff I
met with from other schools indicated that an opt-in program was the preferable approach.
I introduced a CLIL program at San Sisto after approximately three years of action research into ways of improving students’
speaking confidence and proficiency, having noticed students’ reluctance to verbally express themselves in the target
language. I was fortunate enough to visit a number of schools with bilingual programs in Queensland and Victoria, and thisinspired me to develop and implement a program suitable for my school’s context.
I believe one sentiment that is common to all Japanese teachers is that we want more people to be able to speak Japanese.
The hard truth, though, is that once Japanese becomes an elective, attrition rates are high (De Kretser & Spence-Brown,2008). Another common sentiment amongst Japanese teachers is that we want our students to be able to use the languagewith confidence. But in my experience (both as a student of high school Japanese in the early 2000s and in my discussions
with students), many learners feel as though they cannot interact in a meaningful way in the language, even after many
years of study. I chose to implement a CLIL program to turn these things around at my school.

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Program
Before launching a full-year program, I read widely on the topic of CLIL. Some of the resources that were most useful forme are included at the end of this paper.
I experimented with different CLIL delivery methods over an 18-month period, using a ‘sampler approach’ where I ran avariety of isolated lessons and mini units based on a range of topics. My focus throughout each session was on ensuring
I used no English and gathering feedback from the students in terms of their levels of success and enjoyment. I made thedecision to use no English because I needed to set the bar high for both myself and the students. If I commenced with themindset that some English was permissible, then I was concerned I could become complacent as a non-native speakerand gradually use more and more English, and therefore not maintain the integrity of a bilingual program. Of course, there
were some occasions where I did use English, but I made a concerted effort through very thorough lesson planning toensure this was kept to an absolute minimum.
Some lessons / units I created included:••••

Art and craft lessons (Valentine’s Day, Hanami)Year 8 Japanese History Unit – 3-week trial with one class
After-school CLIL program – optional program with native-speaker guest teachers covering cultural topics such as
pottery making, Japanese hairpiece making and Japanese cooking
Festival lessons such as Tanabata.

My main learning out of each of these experiences was that if you raise the bar in terms of use of target language in theclassroom, the students will rise and meet you there. The sense of accomplishment students reported at being able tosuccessfully participate in Japanese-only lessons encouraged me to continue with the program and, ultimately, write ayear-long course.
As stated earlier, the course was a Year 10 opt-in Media Studies program. I wrote the program in line with the ACARA
Achievement Standards for Year 10 Japanese and Year 10 Media Arts and met both Achievement Standards within thenormal allocated timeslot for Japanese. Having outcomes that are genuinely commensurate with the level of learning
expected of students under the wider curriculum is important for CLIL; developing new understandings and skills in thecontent is no less important than in the language itself (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010). Further, this was possible because
CLIL is such an efficient method of teaching – students are learning language that is immediately relevant to the content
being taught, as they need it. The chances students have to use language they have just learnt, in a meaningful context
related to the content just learnt, contribute to a higher level of language retention.
The teacher and students were expected to speak as much Japanese as possible; after a few weeks of allowing the girls
to speak to me in English, I eventually enforced a rule where I would ‘ignore them’ until they attempted to formulate theirquestion or statement in Japanese. The girls saw the funny side, and enjoyed the challenge. From my perspective, it was
important to place the focus on attempting to articulate in the target language, rather than accuracy. This process led tohigher confidence amongst the students, evidenced by their increased willingness to communicate with me and eachother in Japanese as the year progressed.
Below is a summary of the topics and assessment covered over the year:
TERM

TOPIC

ASSESSMENTLANGUAGE FOCUS

1

Japanese Cooking
Shows

Plan, script, film and edit a segment for a Japanesecooking show Standard Listening Exam (based on Obento
Supreme)

Stating location of objects, expressing time, linking
adjectives using て form, negative adjectives

2

Anime

Director’s commentary of a Studio Ghibli scene tobe recorded as a special feature on a DVD (this was
conducted as a conversation with the teacher)Standard Writing Exam (based on Obento Supreme)て form verbs, seasons, weather

3/4

Advertising

Create a Japanese-style advertising campaign as a groupand write an accompanying exegesis individuallyStandard Speaking Exam (based on Obento Supreme)Standard Grammar Exam (based on Obento Supreme)

Plain form, giving reasons (から), stating opinions (と思う)NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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Benefits and pitfalls
Benefits
CLIL has had a significant impact on the teaching and learning of Japanese at San Sisto. Firstly, I, as the teacher, experienced
a large spike in motivation. Learning more about CLIL through practice and seeing the students succeed was professionallyvery invigorating. Becoming a CLIL teacher encouraged me to use much more of the target language in all of my Japaneseclasses, as I witnessed in each CLIL lesson how much more quickly students were acquiring language. When students
are exposed to the language in a meaningful context and are required to use it immediately, they seem to develop theirlanguage skills at a much quicker rate. Attention during class time was always incredibly focused, as the students’ brains
worked hard to keep up with the linguistic and conceptual challenges of Japanese Media Studies. The atmosphere in theclass was one of togetherness, accomplishment and joy. There were many laughs as the students (and the teacher) did
their best to communicate.
Retention rates into Year 11 for 2017 were the highest I had yet seen at San Sisto. Sixteen of the 20 CLIL students continued
into Senior. They have so far managed the demands of Year 11 more easily than students in previous years; some haveeven approached me to gently request that I speak more Japanese in class.
Below are some comments from the students, reported in Term 4 of 2016. I was very moved by the impact this class had
on a number of the students. These comments were obtained anonymously through Survey Monkey.
What skills did you acquire?

‘Confidence in my speaking - When you use nothing but Japanese for a subject for a whole year, you get used to using
it. It challenged me to think about how I can use what I know to get my point across, and this has no doubt improved myabilities to have conversations in Japanese.’‘Analysis. The exegesis we did helps with English classes as well because we have to do the same thing with analysing
documentaries and texts, so having more practice in both subjects and languages is beneficial.’
What have you learnt about yourself? Have you changed or grown?

‘By taking this course, my friendships with other students have strengthened and because of this I have become a better
person.’‘I have attained better problem-solving skills and learnt that there is more than one or two ways to tackle problems. I
have learnt to just dive straight into problems.’‘Honestly, I really feel I have grown as a person. I can connect with people over my love of Japanese and it has helped
me form new friendships. My love and appreciation for the Japanese culture has also grown if that’s even possible.’
It was heartening to read that students not only felt the course helped them improve their Japanese but that they saw
applications outside the Japanese classroom for the skills they were acquiring. The levels of enjoyment they expressed
highlighted to me the satisfaction and happiness students can experience in a supportive but academically rigorous
environment.

Pitfalls
The main challenge I faced in developing and implementing this program was the time-consuming nature of planning for
CLIL lessons and creating resources. I found I was needing to write highly detailed lesson plans for every lesson, to ensurethat the language I was exposing the girls to was appropriate to their stage of learning.
Undeniably, it was challenging at times to keep up the students’ confidence and motivation. Some students foundthe added challenge of CLIL exactly right; others at times questioned their abilities and their place in the class. It was
rewarding, however, to offer these students encouragement and see them ‘pick themselves up’ and continue to flourish
in the Japanese classroom.

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Conclusion
After my 2016 presentation in Melbourne, I created and continue to moderate a Facebook page entitled ‘Japanese CLIL
Network’. As of January 2018, there were 124 members. Teachers regularly post their experiences, successes andquestions relating to CLIL. It has been heartening to realise that there are many Japanese teachers around Australiainterested in getting CLIL programs off the ground at their own schools, and this encourages me to continue my researchand experiments into this teaching methodology.

References
De Kretser, A., & Spence-Brown, R. (2008). The Current State of Japanese Language Education in Australian Schools. Melbourne: Education Services Australia Ltd.

Useful CLIL Resources
Online Articles:David Marsh – Using Languages to Learn and Learning to Use Languages
http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/clilmatrix/pdf/1UK.pdf
This article by David Marsh is not just useful for teachers, but can be used to help explain CLIL to parents too.
Case study in CLIL in Victorian schools – Russell Cross
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/languages/
CLILtrialresearchrpt.pdf
I read this several times as I began my CLIL journey. Very practical. Interviews with some of the teachers involved in these
programs feature on the Language Learning Space.
Language Learning Space – Professional Development Resource – CLIL
https://www.lls.edu.au/teacherspace/professionallearning/2186
Spend some time watching the videos – really useful.
Simone Smala – University of Queensland - Introducing Content and Language Integrated Learning
http://www.acsa.edu.au/pages/images/simone%20smala%20-%20introducing%20content%20and%20language.pdf
Books:
CLIL – Content and Language Integrated Learning by Do Coyle, Phillip Good and David MarshI read this from cover to cover and am constantly going back to this resource. Couldn’t have delivered my course without it.
CLIL Activities – A resource to subject and language teachers by Liz Dale and Rosie Tanner.
Very useful resource once you have a program / unit / lesson in mind and need help coming up with activities.

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Social media tools
to enhance collaboration
with students andcolleagues
Shingo Gibson-Suzuki
Taylor’s Lakes Secondary College (Vic)

Introduction:
How social media has changed the way we communicate
Since the public introduction of Facebook in 2006 (Phillips, 2007) and exponential growth in the number of social media
platforms and smartphone users in recent years, activity in the virtual world has, in one way or another, become a societal
norm. Checking one’s phone in the morning is routine daily behaviour for most people. Michelle Klein, the Head of Marketingat Facebook North America, told Social Media Week 2016 that the average millennial checks their phones more than
150 times every day (Smith, 2016). These developments raise some interesting questions for language teachers. What
if we could take advantage of this habitual behaviour and turn it into professional development by connecting with othereducators around Australia? What if students could collaborate with other students outside school hours to communicate
with each other in Japanese under our supervision? And why should we as educators be limited to using social media
platforms solely to share personal memories and experiences with our friends and family?

Background
School profile
I teach Japanese at a government secondary school located in the western suburbs of metropolitan Melbourne, where
there is a mixed demographic ranging from low socio-economic single-parent families to middle class, two-parent families.
Many students view language learning as a secondary option compared to subject areas such as STEM and English, as
language learning is often perceived as too difficult beyond simple script recognition (in the case of Japanese) and how to
ask each other’s name.
With increasing mobile data allowances on affordable smartphone plans, students and teachers are more readily
connected to social media than ever. During 2012, in order to create an online collaborative platform for my students
to interact outside of class time, I trialled various education social media platforms, with limited success. One student
suggested setting up a private group on Facebook that students could join without the teacher friending them. In orderto ensure I was not working counter to any departmental guidelines, I consulted the Department of Education Victoria‘Using Social Media’ policy prior to setting up a Facebook private group. I observed social media usage behaviours in
my colleagues and decided to implement an approach similar to the one used to connect Japanese teachers throughsocial media platforms for professional development, resource sharing and support. The following sections discussthese two initiatives in more detail.

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Establishing online learning communities
When establishing a ‘learning community’, one must understand the nature of community, including its purpose,characteristics, and how it is formed and maintained. According to the Dictionary of Sociology (Marshall, 1998 as cited in
McInnerney and Roberts 2004, p. 75) the term ‘community’ refers to a gathering of people within a singular social structure,or a sense of belonging to a social structure. Berlanga, Bitter-Rijpkema, Brouns, Sloep and Fetter (2011) take the definition
further by adding the existence of a specific or joint goal, similar interests and hobbies within the communities. Garrison(2007) also invokes ‘common purposes’ when defining community. ‘Warm’ and ‘sociable’ conduct that fosters improved
communication and a safe environment that tolerates mistakes are viewed as a positive social presence essential tocreating productive and beneficial online learning communities (Kear, 2010).
Establishing online collaborative learning spaces takes little effort, but maintaining such groups by moderating and providing
support to others can be difficult and must be built on consistently appropriate behaviour and trust. Gerdes (2010) places
strong emphasis on the importance of trust and its influences on the overall outcomes of collaborative projects. Whensetting up a platform for students, ongoing support and moderation is crucial, as students often need prompting before
they feel confident to post or comment proactively.
It is also necessary for the teacher and students to understand the purpose of the online group being created. For
example, the purpose could be to foster enriched discussions and share ideas between individuals. Without clear
goals and purpose, the group can quickly lose focus and members will not participate and collaborate willingly andeffectively. Relevant content and frequent posts that encourage interaction help maintain momentum within thegroup. It is also crucial for the teacher to model respectful online behaviour and demonstrate the positive impacts
social media sites can have on individuals.

Utilising ‘online’ classrooms
The specific ways I utilise the Facebook group with my Year 12 students differ depending on class dynamics and learning
styles. I primarily use the group for two purposes. It is an excellent platform to check students’ understanding at the endof the day through asking formative assessment type questions. This can be as simple as typing up short sentences using
vocabulary and grammar structures learned earlier in the week, which students are required to translate or respondto using familiar sentence structures and vocabulary. If you have a particular student who has certain weaknesses ingrammatical usage, such as particles, it is possible to tag the student in the relevant question to ensure he or she responds
directly. Another use of the group is for online reminders or passing on information regarding upcoming assessments orevents. When Facebook groups are small, the platform shows how many members have viewed the post, which is anefficient way to track how often your students view your posts.
When it is difficult for participants to anticipate outcomes without instantaneous responses it is crucial that clear guidelines
for participant roles and commitment be developed. The primary benefit to using a Facebook group is that most Facebook
users are already familiar with the functionality and features of the social media tool, as it is often incorporated into users’
daily routine for personal use. Schools often warn students about their online presence and potential consequences ofcertain behaviours. Utilising Facebook as a platform is a real-life opportunity for teachers to model and teach acceptablesocial media use: not making personal details available, and protecting their professional image by never posting
unacceptable material.
Using the Facebook group was great because everyone in my class had it [Facebook] and we already knew how to use
it. When I had questions, I could just ask and someone, not just the teacher, responded. (Year 12 Student, 2016)
Another collaboration platform I regularly use with my students is a Cloud-Storage platform, Box.com. While the Facebook
group is predominantly used for communication, Box.com caters for sharing classroom resources and checking workthat students submit online to shared folders. At the beginning of each school year, I create a shared folder for my Year 12
students, where each student gets his or her own online folder. When submitting writing practice, students are required
to submit their written work directly by simply taking photos using their mobile phones and uploading using the Box.com
app. I then use annotation software such as ‘Explain Everything’ on the tablet to record my annotated notes and voiceNSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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instructions as a video and upload these back into their folders, which they can view in their own time. Students benefit
greatly from this method as they can view the feedback multiple times as well as hear the correct pronunciation. Both ofthese platforms, as well as others with similar functionality, can also be used with colleagues as collaborative tools.

Social networking for teachers
In 2014, I established a collaborative Facebook group, Japanese Language Teachers of Australia, in order to address thelack of opportunities for Japanese teachers to effectively connect and share ideas across different states in Australia.
The purpose of the Facebook group was to create a nation-wide collaborative space that encouraged the sharing ofskills, professional knowledge and development and support for teachers encountering the unique difficulties of teaching
Japanese in Australia. I was not alone in identifying the need for greater connectivity, as this issue was addressed during
the panel session at the National Symposium for Japanese Language Education in 2014.
Prior to the group’s establishment, Japanese teachers predominantly communicated through email newsletters at statelevel, and there was limited opportunity for interstate teacher communication, resource sharing and collaboration. This
prompted me to explore the option of using a Facebook group as a way to share and collaborate between educators fromdifferent states and sectors. Initially, I used my professional connections to recruit potential members while blocking fakeusers or users with no connections to Japanese language education. The group steadily grew in numbers over three years
and currently consists of more than 2,400 users (as at December 2017).
Members are generally very active in sharing useful teaching-related resources and requesting assistance. Posts requestingideas, resources, or assistance from others often attract many responses, demonstrating the dedication of members
and their willingness to help others regardless of their backgrounds. According to a survey of members of the Japanese
Language Teachers of Australia Facebook group I conducted in 2016, more than 80% of respondents indicated the main
reason they participate in the group is to share ideas with other teachers. The remaining respondents reported using thegroup mostly to ask questions. These responses indicate high levels of interaction and perceived usefulness of the group.
Online learning communities have become more readily available to individuals, regardless of geographical location, thus
allowing communication and collaboration in synchronous and asynchronous manners. Ke and Hoadley (2009) refer tolearning communities as effective ways for teachers to gain professional development skills by allowing the sharingof ideas and knowledge through practice and theory. The ability to approach other teachers across state and nationalboundaries for professional development ideas and teaching resources could contribute to improved best practice inteaching methodologies on a local basis.

Benefits and pitfalls
Benefits
Students and teachers are already familiar with the functionality of popular social media platforms, and therefore the use ofsuch platforms for learning purposes is readily absorbed into daily social media habits and behaviours. The informal appearanceof formative assessments conducted through social media platforms creates an easy to use and student-friendly approach toessential data gathering. By providing a supportive and interactive environment where students feel respected and safe to makeerrors, teachers can create a more friendly ‘face’ to language learning, particularly in the senior years.
Groups aimed at teachers often consist of active members who contribute regularly by responding to questions and sharing
ideas. Teachers feel supported and validated by sharing their knowledge and requesting information from each other. It has
been indicated by teachers in the Facebook group that, through the group, they have discovered new teaching strategies
and resources regardless of their experience levels. Teachers are able to develop low-effort formative assessment that
produces an accurate reflection of individual student understanding of material being taught. Cloud-based storage ofresources frees up physical space and significantly increases the ability to share resources in a school-wide, state or evenglobal capacity. This capacity is particularly important to teachers in regional or rural areas that may feel isolated or haveaccess to limited resources, and professional development.

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Pitfalls
Students may feel they are constantly monitored and required to follow and respond to posts that come up at inconvenient
times of day. Some students may also feel their social media usage is being intruded upon by their teachers. If a student
has their access to social media removed for some reason, they could be disadvantaged in the classroom unless steps aretaken to mitigate the loss of access to the online material.
Although it is great for teachers to be able to connect with students and colleagues at all times, it is also difficult to switch
off and disconnect from the virtual world. In order to alleviate this issue the teacher can set boundaries and limits about
their availability, such as protecting their personal time from being eroded by not responding to posts after a set time. Thereis a risk that constant connectivity could increase teacher burnout. There are potential down-sides to the use of social
media for collegial sharing as well. Teachers could feel pressured to perform ‘better’ after seeing others teachers’ posts
about what they are achieving with their students.

Conclusion
Participants become part of learning communities due to their similar learning goals and objectives. This is true for bothstudent-based groups and teaching-based groups. Members of the Japanese Language Teachers of Australia Facebook
group come from diverse backgrounds, but they all have similar interests and goals, which are to enrich their knowledge andunderstanding of Japanese Language in educational settings and to share their ideas in discussions. These groups provide
numerous opportunities for participants to ask questions, seek clarification, and contribute their ideas and knowledge tothe benefit of the rest of the group community. Social media plays a large part in modern society; students in the twentyfirst century are constantly exposed to this and expected to be familiar with it. Many future occupations require the use ofsocial media to promote products and services, and collaborate with others. As teachers, we can seize this opportunity to
prepare our students with skills likely to help them succeed in the workforce of the future.

References
Berlanga, A., Bitter-Rijpkema, M., Brouns, F., Sloep, P., & Fetter, S. (2011). Personal Profiles: Enhancing Social Interaction in Learning Networks. Int. J. Web
Based Communities, 7(1), 66-82.
Garrison, D. (2007). Online Community of Inquiry Review: Social, Cognitive, and Teaching Presence Issues. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks,
Retrieved from http://sites.google.com/site/galexambrose/my-log/communityofinquiryarticlereview/2007JALNOnlineCommunityofInquiryReview.pdf
Ke, F., & Hoadley, C. (2009). Evaluating Online Learning Communities. Education Tech Research Dev, 57 487-510. DOI 10.1007/s11423-009-9120-2
Kear, K. (2010). Social presence in online learning communities. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning 2010, 3-4 May
2010, Aalborg, Denmark Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk/21777/
McInnerney, J., & Roberts, T. (2004). Online Learning: Social Interaction and the Creation of a Sense of Community. Education Technology & Society, 7(3),73-81.
Phillips, S. (2007). A Brief History of Facebook, Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia
Smith, S. (2016). Four Things to Consider about the Future of Communication, as told by Facebook Head of Marketing Michelle Klein, Retrieved from http://
www.gtxcel.com/four-things-to-consider-with-the-future-of-communication-as-told-by-facebook-head-of-marketing-michelle-klein-smwnyc/

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Improving assessment
in Japanese throughthe use of digital tools
Nathan Lane
St Columba’s College (Vic)

Background
St Columba’s College is a Catholic girls’ secondary school in Melbourne. The College offers three languages: French, Italianand Japanese. Language learning is compulsory from Years 7 to 9, and an elective in the senior years, 10 to 12. Students
choose one language prior to entering Year 7 and they study this language from Years 7 to 9 and beyond if they choose theelective option at Year 10. The trial reported here was conducted with the 2016 Year 10 Japanese class, which consistedof nine students. The effectiveness of digital tools to obtain feedback and to provide feedback to students formed the focusof this trial.
The importance of feedback has been highlighted by academics in the field of education including Black and Wiliam(1998), Hattie (2012), Hattie and Timperley (2007) and Masters (2013). Their research into what makes a difference in theclassroom has been influential in changing teacher pedagogy. As teachers we need to ensure that the student is at thecentre of all the work that we do, and that we empower our students to be active learners rather than passive recipients.
Hattie and Timperley (2007, p. 104) assert that ‘when feedback is combined with effective instruction in classrooms, it canbe very powerful in enhancing learning’. With that in mind, the focus for this intervention was to explore how digital tools
can support and enhance feedback in the Japanese classroom through the evaluation of various feedback tools. Threequestions were addressed in the trial:
1. How can I improve formative assessment through the use of digital tools?
2. What digital tools will help me find out what students are learning during class and at the end of the lesson?
3. Will the use of digital tools serve as motivation for students in their Japanese studies?

The changing nature of language teaching pedagogy
Lo Bianco and Slaughter (2009, p. 28) argues that ‘good teaching is the single most important controllable variable insuccessful language learning’. ‘Good teaching’ or effective language teaching pedagogy involves using a range of strategies
to engage students and to make language learning relevant and accessible to all. This includes, among other strategies,
using games, songs, mnemonics, authentic materials and contemporary topics. The use of digital technologies has thepotential to also be a powerful way to engage students with their language learning (de Kretser and Spence-Brown 2010,
p. 50). Not only can students play or create their own games to learn hiragana, katakana and kanji, or to master vocabulary
and grammatical structures, they can use technology for the purposes of formative assessment to provide and receive
feedback on their learning. The extent to which teachers use digital tools to support their teaching depends on teacher
confidence and competence, as well as the availability of resources at their school.

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Formative assessment through the use of digital tools
Masters (2014, p. 1) succinctly defines the fundamental purpose of assessment as ‘to establish and understand wherelearners are in an aspect of their learning at the time of assessment’. This information can then be used by teachers to
inform and plan future directions in their teaching. Masters (2015) proposes that ‘the use of assessment information to
guide future action might be described as the “formative” use of assessment’. In recent times a number of digital tools
have been created for the purpose of identifying where students are at in their learning. Using digital tools is an effective
way of checking for understanding during and at the end of the class. The advantage of using digital tools is that feedback
from students can be received in real time. There are numerous formative assessment digital tools available for teachers,
giving them both multiple options and the challenge of choosing among them. In response to this variety, teachers should
consider what the learning intention for the lesson is, and which tool will work for the particular class and lead to achieving
the learning intention. Teachers should experiment with a range of digital tools while recognising that some tools have
similar functions and will provide the same outcome.

The power of student voice
Hattie (2015) highlights the importance of listening to the voices of our students in order to understand the impact teachers
have in the way they teach. Student voice ‘can be a major resource for understanding and promoting high-impact teaching
and learning’ (p. 16). In light of this, at the beginning of the trial in term 2 the students in the Year 10 class completed asurvey. At this point in their learning the students had already completed one term of Japanese. The following questions
were posed to ascertain from the students their attitudes towards feedback.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Are you informed of the learning intentions and success criteria in lessons at school?
What does feedback mean to you?
In what ways do your teachers provide feedback to you on the progress in your learning?
What do you do with the feedback provided by your teachers?
What opportunities are provided to you to demonstrate your understanding and to provide feedback to yourteachers during class?
6. In what ways do your teachers check for understanding during a lesson?
7. In what ways do your teachers check for your understanding at the end of a lesson?
8. Do your teachers use digital tools to check for your understanding and to obtain feedback from you during a lessonor at the end of a lesson? If so, what are these tools?

The responses from the students highlighted the importance of clearly stating learning intentions and success criteria at
the start of the lesson and of monitoring progress towards achieving these throughout the lesson. One student commented‘Only in some classes I am informed of the learning intentions and success criteria. I believe this should be announced at
the start of a lesson in order to know what you’re trying to achieve and ask relevant questions’.
The reflections also revealed that a consistent approach to acquiring feedback from the students during and at the end of
the lesson, or at the start of the following lesson, will further support learning. One interesting comment from a student
about the feedback she generally received was ‘Teachers either write comments, fill out rubrics or talk to me personallyas ways of feedback. It’s generally written as comments on assessments, tests or reports.’ This comment highlighted
that feedback strategies were perhaps not being used on a regular basis in class to ascertain where students are at intheir learning. The students also identified that they are confident and competent users of digital technologies, as revealed
in a comment by a student, ‘I feel pretty comfortable in using technology and I like to trial new things.’ Thus the use of
appropriate digital tools should be embedded in the curriculum and be a part of their learning.

Trialling digital tools
A number of digital tools were trialled by the students each lesson over a five-week period to check their understanding
during the lesson. These included: Vizia, Kahoot, Quizizz, Go Formative, Google Forms (quiz option), Quizlet, Hot Potatoes

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and the Languages Online gamemaker templates. To check for understanding at the end of the lesson the students
completed ‘exit tickets’ using Twitter, Google Forms and Speakpipe. ‘Exit tickets’ enable students to reflect on what they
have learnt during the lesson. They are completed at the end of the lesson and the responses are reviewed by the teacher
to inform the focus of the work in the next lesson. Alternatively, ‘entry tickets’ can be used, where students reflect on what
they learnt during the previous lesson at the start of the next lesson.
Previously I had made my students complete ‘exit tickets’ on paper and then I collected and analysed the responses.
Having the students complete these digitally means I am able to receive the feedback immediately and the responses canbe stored in one place rather than on individual pieces of paper. ‘Exit tickets’ can also be thought of as ‘thinking diaries’
where students reflect on what they did during the lesson, what they found easy and difficult, what skills they used anddeveloped, and how they can apply these skills to other areas.
The students completed a post survey to ascertain their attitudes towards the digital tools that were trialled. The students
reflected on the questions and their responses were insightful. The following comments are a sample of the student
responses and do not reflect the opinions of the whole class.
1. Which digital tools did you find useful for providing feedback on your learning during class and why?
I liked Google Forms, Kahoot and Quizlet. They are very useful for not only Japanese but other subjects. They are
well known and easily accessible.
Google Forms works really well to provide feedback on your learning.
Google, Kahoot and Quizizz were probably some of the best digital tools used. Especially Quizizz as it tested ourknowledge with a time limit and with the questions we got wrong it gave us feedback by telling us the correct
answer.
2. Which digital tools did you find least useful for providing feedback on your learning during class and why?
With Twitter most people our age don’t have it, so it is not very useful.
Go Formative, as it never really told or gave feedback on what we did wrong.
3. How useful do you find using digital tools to reflect on your learning at the end of a lesson (for example Exit
Tickets)?
I found it very useful as it tests my knowledge in a fun and exciting way.
I think that Speakpipe was a better way of reflecting as it could be done in your own time at home.
I really find Google Forms and Speakpipe helpful because it is easy to use and allows us to reflect on what welearnt and know.
4. Do digital tools motivate you in your learning?
Games such as Kahoot and Quizizz are fun but also educational.
Kahoot is always fun and engaging.

Observations and Conclusion
The trial gave students the opportunity to explore how digital tools can support their learning. This was achieved throughevaluating the feedback tools that were presented to the class. It is important to note that no tool was being endorsed
throughout the trial. The feedback from the students was useful in determining which feedback tools to embed acrossall my classes. A consistent thread in student feedback was that they enjoyed the competitive element of digital tools
such as Kahoot and Quizizz. The rapid pace of these tools, providing instant feedback to students, ensures that they arebeing engaged in their learning, and at the same time provides feedback to their teacher to inform what happens next inthe classroom and what adjustments need to be made to their instruction. As observed by Team ISTE (2015), ‘digital tools
engage students and provide teachers with quick feedback they can use to personalize learning experiences for theirstudents’. Interestingly, as reported, the students did not find Twitter a useful tool for providing feedback on their learning
as high school students are not using Twitter.
In using digital tools in the Japanese classroom, I believe it is important to consider these questions: What is it that I am
trying to achieve? Will the digital tools and technology be used in a meaningful way, given the large number of options
that are available? What will suit my intended purpose and desired outcome the best? It is important to remember that

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the learning should be driving the use of the technology. Timing is also important in receiving feedback from students inorder to maximize the individual potential of each student. The digital tools trialled provided students with opportunities toreceive personal feedback as well as whole-class feedback. Feedback needs to be ongoing, with opportunities built in toeach lesson to check for understanding during and at the end of the lesson. It is also important to consider that the tools
used to gain feedback should be varied to ensure students are engaged, and that they do not become disengaged by using
the same method of feedback all the time. From an organisational perspective, using digital tools is a more effective way
to maintain records of student feedback and to access data when required.

References
Black, P. and D. Wiliam. 1998. ‘Inside the black box: raising standards through classroom assessment.’ Phi Delta Kappan, 80 (2): 139-48.
De Kretser, A. and R. Spence-Brown. 2010. The Current State of Japanese Language Education in Australian Schools. Melbourne: Education Services
Australia.
Hattie, J. 2012. Visible learning for teachers: maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.
———. 2015. What works best in education: The politics of collaborative expertise. London: Pearson.
Hattie, J. and H. Timperley. 2007. ‘The power of feedback’. Review of Educational Research, 77 (1): 81-112.
Lo Bianco, J. and Y. Slaughter. 2009. Second languages and Australian schooling. Melbourne: ACER Press. Retrieved from http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=aer
Masters, G. 2013. Reforming education assessment: Imperatives, principles and challenges (Australian Education Review No. 57). Retrieved from http://
research.acer.edu.au/aer/12/———. 2014. ‘Assessment: getting to the essence’. Designing the future 1: 1-6. Retrieved from https://www.acer.org/files/uploads/Assessment_Getting_to_the_essence.pdf———. 2015. ‘Rethinking formative and summative assessment’. Teacher bulletin (20 May). Retrieved from https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/geoffmasters/article/rethinking-formative-and-summative-assessment
Team ISTE. 2015. ‘Twitter in the classroom? Make formative assessments fun with digital tools.’ Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?
articleid=589&category=In-the-classroom&article

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Targeted differentiation
in a Japanese language
course context
Liberty Campbell
St Paul’s College, Manly (NSW)Introduction
An action research project using differentiation strategies in Japanese classes was conducted at St Paul’s Catholic
College Manly, a Catholic comprehensive boys’ school. Japanese is the only language offered at St Paul’s Catholic
College and all five classes in Year 8 study Japanese for one year. The Japanese course is taught by two experienced
teachers who have each been employed at the school for more than 10 years. It had been noted by the teachersthat the students were less receptive to teacher-centred instruction in recent years. This was evident in the moredisruptive behaviours and less focussed work ethic during the teacher-led activities. The students were found tobe agreeable and compliant as individuals but less so when part of a larger class group. In 2014, I commenced a
Masters of Education. As part of this study I investigated factors that could be contributing to the decline in student
acceptance of teacher-led instruction at the school.

Background
Learning a foreign language has not been seen as a vital part of the curriculum at St Paul’s Catholic College. Business,
sport, or ICT-based subjects tend to be the more popular elective courses, reflecting the employment and lifestyles ofthe parent body. Opportunities to use Japanese language usually take the form of leisure activities such as dining out at
the many Japanese restaurants in the area or family skiing trips to Hokkaido. Opportunities to use language beyond suchshallow experiences are rarely considered. This is in line with research by Pavy (2006), who noted that students regularly
fail to see the relevance of their language learning beyond the classroom.
A second deterrent noted by Pavy (2006) with regards to language uptake is the lack of progress indicators in many
classrooms. Students of Japanese at the school were simply not able to see the progress they were making, and parents
were disappointed that their son could not translate for them after the 100 hours compulsory course in Year 8. In thiscontext the work of the languages department was neither visible nor valued.
I was also influenced by post-graduate readings on motivational studies. Humans are naturally motivated to work
harder and persist with tasks they feel they are good at or that they consider to have value. Self-determination theory
is based on the premise that people will experience higher levels of motivation when they are in an environment thatprovides them with opportunities to feel competent, autonomous, and related to the group and its work (Ryan &Deci, 2000). The pedagogical choices that teachers make also affect the motivation of their students. I wanted more
students to experience these feelings in Japanese classes on a regular basis and felt the teacher-centred approach
was incongruent with this goal.
The third concept to influence the action research project design was social constructivism. Social constructivism implies
that students will naturally learn from those around them (Vygotsky, 1978). This is best achieved when contact with

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a ‘more knowledgeable other’ (MKO) is maximised and the content or task is set in the individual’s zone of proximal
development (ZPD, the space where they cannot complete a task alone but can do so with scaffolding and support froman MKO; Churcher et al., 2014; Kingringer, 2002). I questioned whether the teacher-centred approach was able to meetsuch ZPD requirements.

Methodology & Project Implementation
If a student gets a concept and understands the content, then there is nothing worse than having to prove to the teacher
that they know something in a way that is not challenging for them. They will see the task as pointless as it doesn’t takethem into their ZPD (Vygotsky, 1978). Some students are more frustrated by this than others, and a disconnection withschool is often felt more strongly by students who struggle to conform to the one-size-fits-all education model.
I designed a brief that aimed to reduce time in the classroom ‘teaching’ in a teacher-centred way, increase time connecting
and communicating with individuals in the class, and increase opportunities for the students to make decisions about theirlearning, who they would work with, and how they would demonstrate their progress. As part of this I initiated an action
research project called the Targets Project.
There are five Year 8 classes of Japanese at St Paul’s Catholic College, taught by two teachers. One class (8Z) is streamed
as a gifted and talented class, the other four classes (8V, 8W, 8X, and 8Y) are designated as mixed-ability classes. I
implemented the Targets Project in the 8Y and 8Z classes. The other Japanese teacher continued to teach her classes
in the standard way, but both teachers were involved in reflection and professional dialogue regarding the progress andengagement of their students. The resources and activities were common across all the classes, but the delivery wasteacher-centred in the non-experimental groups.
The experiment went through three phases, each phase lasting for one unit of approximately 5 to 6 weeks. After eachphase student feedback was sought via written feedback sheets at the end of the unit. The two teachers also discussed
the perceived behaviour and engagement of the students and the perceived stress levels of both teachers using the twopedagogies (teacher-centred and student-centred targets).

Phase 1
The first phase of the project began with a moderate change to the current resources. The school was using a hard copy of
the Jblog textbook (Campbell, 2014) and the matching student work booklets. Each student had access to his own laptop.
The department wanted to experiment with how they could better facilitate learning and also provide the students withmore visible indicators of their achievement in learning each unit. In particular, they wanted to cultivate more individual timewith the teacher for each student and move away from the traditional teacher-centred model.
I created a targets sheet (Appendix 1) that simply listed all the tasks in the student workbook under the various topics in thechapter. Each task was numbered along with the main skill required to undertake it, for example, listening, reading, writing,speaking, and cultural understanding. Two additional columns were added for the students to write the date the task wascompleted and for the teacher to sign off the work.
The teacher would introduce the material briefly and refer students to the relevant pages in the textbook. The students
were then able to choose from the tasks to provide evidence of their learning in each subtopic. As a student finished atask, he would ask the teacher to validate his task. At this point the teacher would provide some quick personal feedback.
It should be noted that even a 3-second, ‘Excellent pronunciation, Tom’ was more individual feedback than students would
often receive in a regular lesson.
The speaking tasks were listed as the most popular activity in student feedback sheets at the end of the unit. The
teachers discussed this and felt they were probably popular because they were relatively quick to complete, they
were a task the students could do together, and because students felt an immediate sense of achievement. They
also had a positive impact on developing rapport between teacher and students, as the students enjoyed having an
audience for their efforts and achievements.

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The students reported on the feedback sheets that they enjoyed the opportunity to choose to work either alone or in small
groups. It was also a novel experience for the teachers to have students wanting them to come and see their work andcompeting for teacher attention. Under the previous teacher-centred model I was the one who had competed to get andmaintain the students’ attention, so this role reversal was a welcome and positive change. It was a little overwhelming
at first until both student and teacher learned how to manage the signing off of tasks. The more mature students would
keep working on subsequent tasks until the teacher could check them off. Less independent students would stop work andput their hand up until the teacher could approach them. Some guidelines were needed to manage this, such as setting
target minimums for a lesson to encourage students to keep working, and to have the teacher move around checking off
students in certain areas of the room at different times.
Another lesson from Phase 1 was the realisation that the student is in fact the person who knows best what will work on
any given day for them. A teacher cannot realistically be expected to predict student learning preferences, as they often
vary widely from day to day. They can, however, enable better student outcomes by providing a suitable range of activities
for the student to choose from. Students are more successful when they are taught based on their own readiness levels,interests, and learning profiles (Tomlinson, 2004). Providing students with autonomy to choose amongst tasks allowed
them to master the content by starting with the skill they felt most confident in, for example, listening.

Phase 2Student feedback on the unit taught with targets sheets was encouraging, so I initiated a second phase with somemodifications to the targets sheet (Appendix 2) and the delivery. Interestingly, despite the relatively large range of task choices
provided, some students approached me with other ideas for demonstrating their learning. This led to the introduction of asection on the Phase 2 targets sheet called student-identified task. Students could propose a task and, with the teacher’s
approval, add it to their individual targets sheet. The new targets sheet now included the student-identified task section, as
well as a column allocating points to each task in recognition that some tasks were more challenging or time consuming
than others. This gave teachers the option of setting a goal such as completing a minimum of two tasks per section andwith a total value of 25 points. Additional speaking tasks were also incorporated, due to their popularity.
Although the majority of the class preferred the student-centred learning style, the languages department also wanted toacknowledge the preference of students who needed a more gradual approach to self-directed learning. Some academic
but passively inclined students who were successful in the teacher-centred environment were less happy with thechanges. They were opposed to having to order the learning themselves, as they felt it was the teacher’s job. A scheduleof varied delivery was established across each fortnight, with two set days for teacher-led work, two days for targets andone day for review or group-based work such as an activity called Amazing Races. Another issue was students sometimes
forgetting to bring their targets sheet and materials needed to complete the targets. This was addressed in Phase 3.

Phase 3
Although the approach to learning seemed to be lifting student engagement and learning outcomes, there was still room
for improvement. Phase 3 aimed to improve the logistics of the tasks by presenting the list of student tasks as a Google
form rather than as a printed booklet. This also allowed sound files to be included as links accessible via Google Classroom.
Presenting the material in this way also addressed the problem of students losing or forgetting their booklets, and had the
additional benefit of reducing the marking load of the teachers (collecting booklets for marking at the end of every unit
created periods of intense marking workload). By replacing hardcopy booklets with Google forms, many tasks could be
self-marked (e.g., multiple-choice) and all marks were tallied automatically. The teachers could also begin marking as soon
as a student had completed a task without waiting for the due date, allowing them some additional flexibility to manage
their workload. Comments and marks could be held back and released manually by the teacher when appropriate. The
department felt this was important progress as there is little point in developing an approach that is not sustainable by theteachers in the longer term. The insight into student work also allowed teachers to have a record of student effort every
lesson and to recognise areas of misunderstanding that required reteaching.
Hattie (2012) has noted that feedback has one of the strongest impacts on student learning outcomes. The staff at St
Paul’s Catholic College recognised that this feedback was only effective if the students took the time to read it. Students
were still strongly influenced by the mindset of ‘marks matter, not comments’. It was felt that opportunities for growth andimprovement were sometimes missed when the feedback comments were not read and reflected upon.

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I decided to develop a mechanism for rewarding attention to feedback and named it the Emperor Feedback System. Thiswas embedded into the targets infrastructure. The Emperor Feedback System operated in the following way: a code word
was hidden in the feedback, for example, between sentences, when the student had impressed the teacher in someway. This allowed for differentiation, as what was impressive in one student might differ from another depending on thestudent’s current position on the learning continuum for that unit. Values were also rewarded, such as challenging oneself
to select harder tasks or demonstrating courage to choose a task no one else in the class attempted. When work was
returned to the students, they were told they had two minutes to read all of the teacher feedback in silence. If at the end of
the two minutes they believed they had received the code word, they would visit the teacher to receive a merit or Japaneselolly. The teacher did not keep a list of recipients so if a student failed to read the feedback carefully, they did not receive
the reward. The code was changed each time and the students were not informed of the code to prevent them scanningfor that word only. This was found to increase student engagement with the feedback and led to more considered choicesby the students about which tasks they would select to provide evidence of their learning.

Discussion
One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.
(Tracy, 2004, p.10)
Student reflections on the Target Project supported this idea. Although units where targets sheets were incorporated wereranked as more enjoyable than normal lessons by the student majority in both classes, the ratio was in fact higher in theso-called weaker mixed-ability class. The results were discussed with a third teacher who was not part of the experiment
but is the leader of the Special Needs Support Team. That teacher aptly summarised the results by saying:
The streamed class are already good at the system. They know how to succeed at school regardless of what theteacher does. They fit in already. The change has the biggest impact on the mixed-ability kids because they are notalready winning. They don’t fit the one-size-fits-all education model. They have shorter attention spans to survive ateacher-centred lesson. They have more self-doubt in their ability to do a task. Targets gave them an opportunity tochoose what works for them.
This insight was important as it went some way to explaining the responses of the students in the end-of-unit surveys. I
had predicted that the streamed 8Z class would benefit most from the change and had been surprised by the degree of
positive feedback from 8Y.
During the project the opportunities for student autonomy, for the development of feelings of competency and for better
relations with the teacher were evident due to the change in pedagogy. While the content remained the same as inprevious years, the change in delivery had a major impact. Individual student preference was revealed as some chose towork alone, some to work with friends, and others to lie down on the tatami mats and work on listening tasks in small
groups. There were no set seats, groups, or order of tasks on these days.
The student feedback reflected an appreciation for the change, including such comments as:
•
•
•
•
•

‘This method is less structured which means you can learn through methods you like, and is therefore moreenjoyable.’‘I enjoyed it all as it was fun and new. It was cool as we could use our computers and had to figure it out ourselves.’‘I liked that there was a baseline of two tasks for each topic.’‘It was independent and put more trust in students. I didn’t dislike anything.’‘I liked the independent work because we could all learn at our own pace. It was different every lesson.’

The quality of the student responses varied, and further preparation of the students on what was required and why would
be beneficial. There was a problem with some students not completing the survey (21% in 8Y and 23% in 8Z) due to their
participation in an off-site school event in Phase 2. The majority of responses were in favour of the design (74% in 8Y and
69% in 8Z in Phase 3) but some of the responses contained mixed responses (both positive and negative aspects in the
one comment) or random comments that were not related to the design (e.g., can we make sushi next term?). This madeit difficult for me to fully understand the students’ perception of the learning experience.

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Conclusion
The aim of the Targets Project was to investigate the impact on student motivation and behaviour of student-centred
content delivery. I designed a brief that aimed to reduce time in the classroom ‘teaching’ in a teacher-centred way, increasetime connecting and communicating with individuals in the class, and increase opportunities for the students to makedecisions about their learning, who they would work with and how they would demonstrate their progress.
The targets were designed to make student progress in Japanese more visible to the students themselves and thesignificant others in their community, such as parents. It also allowed the teacher to move into a role of encouragement
and support as opposed to a position of control and direction. The language teachers at St Paul’s Catholic College believethat learning a language is a skill that should be made accessible to all students. This differentiation strategy enabled us toprovide a gateway to language for a greater range of students.

Recommendations
Whilst it was perceived as a preferable delivery model for the majority of the students involved in the experiment, further
phases are necessary to determine whether the increased motivation levels could be sustained in the longer term or were
simply a product of being a novelty for the participants. Including the other Japanese teacher and her three classes would
also be the next logical step to determine if the design was applicable to other settings and if it would produce similar
results. It would also be worthwhile to spend more time explaining the benefits of the target design to the students who arelikely to be uncomfortable with it, for example the academically successful but passively inclined students. They could bemade aware of the benefits to them such as developing skills in independent learning that they could apply if they continue
to tertiary level studies. More accurate collection of student feedback such as increasing the return rate and training thestudents to avoid mixed responses (both positive and negative aspects in the one comment) or random comments thatwere not related to the design would also improve the validity of the findings for future teachers trialling the design.

References
Campbell, L. (2014). Jblog textbook 1. Forestville, NSW: Manten Resources.
Churcher, K., Downs, E., & Tewksbury, D. (2014). ‘Friending’ Vygotsky: A social constructivist pedagogy of knowledge building through classroom social
media use. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 14(1), 33-50.
Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.
Kingringer, C. (2002). Defining the Zone of Proximal Development in US foreign language education. Applied Linguistics, 23(2): 240-261.
Pavy, S. (2006). Boys learning languages. Babel, 41: 4-11, 38.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American
Psychologist, 55(1): 68-78. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Tomlinson, C. (2004). How to differentiate instruction in mixed ability classrooms. Australia: Hawker Brownlow Education.
Tracy, B. (2004). Eat that frog! London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. London: Harvard University Press.

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGSAPPENDIX 1
Phase 1 Targets Sheet59NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGSAPPENDIX 2
Phase 2 Targets Sheet60

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Towards effective
advocacy – evaluationof the Nihongo Roadshow
and the School Leader
Fellowship Program
Mayumi Mitsuya
Cathy JonakThe Japan Foundation, Sydney

Introduction
Australia has the fourth highest number of learners of Japanese in the world (Kokusai Kōryū Kikin, 2015), and Japaneseis the most learned language in primary and secondary schools. However, in many regional areas there are very limited
opportunities to connect with Japanese language and culture, and this can lead to Japanese language learners feelingdisengaged from their learning.
Japan has recently been losing its economic power while China’s presence has been expanding. This is reflected in thesituation of Japanese language education in Australia, where stakeholders’ interest in Asian languages has been shiftingfrom Japanese to Chinese. Faced with this reality and with the decline in languages in schools in general, the JapanFoundation, Sydney (JFSYD) has come to recognise that advocacy for Japanese language education is critical, and has
implemented two programs, the Nihongo Roadshow and the School Leader Fellowship Program.
This paper reports on these programs and on their influence on students and the school community. It then presents theresults of a survey of teachers from various states on the most effective ways to advocate Japanese, and considers how
to formulate future advocacy.

Nihongo Roadshow
Outline
The Nihongo Roadshow is a program which integrates a quiz day for students, a professional development (PD) session
for teachers, a film night for both students and parents and a meeting with school principals. The aim of this event is notjust to entertain students and parents with quizzes or film screenings, but to offer opportunities to connect with authentic
Japanese language and culture and to advocate Japanese learning. JFSYD has conducted the Roadshow in eight cities inthree states. Table 1 below shows the participation levels that were achieved.

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Quiz Day
The quiz day participants were primary and secondary students. A total of 1217 students from 57 schools in three states
participated in the quiz days. The quiz questions reflected the aims of the Australian Curriculum and of language learning
in general, and the quiz was conducted in a combination of English and Japanese, adjusting to the level of the students.
Between the quiz rounds students participated in cultural activities such as the chopstick challenge and the kendama relay.

Film NightA film night was held for students and parents, and before the screening we gave a short information session to parents on‘Why learn Japanese?’, where we explained the benefits of learning languages and of learning Japanese in particular. We
also handed out the advocacy flyer produced by the Japanese Language Teachers’ Association of Victoria (JLTAV) which
gives information on how parents can support children in learning Japanese.

Meeting with principals (Tasmania only)
Principals from the host schools were invited to the quiz day, and a meeting between the principal and the JF staff wasplanned. Unfortunately, due to the principals’ busy schedules, only one principal was able to participate in the in-depth
meeting. (As a result we decided not to schedule a principal’s meeting at the following Roadshow events and to consider
other ways of advocating to the principal.)In the meeting we gave the principal information about JFSYD grant programs and PD for teachers. We also explained thesituation of Japanese language education in Australia, emphasizing that the quality of Japanese teachers is high and that
there is generally a good supply of teachers, so Japanese programs can be maintained.

PD session
For the Japanese teachers we held an information session and a PD session. In the information session we explained our
grant programs and student events, and introduced useful websites including our Classroom Resources Website. In the PD
session we showed how to use quizzes in the classroom, and shared quiz questions. Our aim was to support teachers inadvocating the study of Japanese to students through quizzes and other events.

Table 1: Numbers of participants in each component, by State

Feedback
Both students and teachers answered a questionnaire following the Roadshow. Additionally, three months after the first
Roadshow in Tasmania, we conducted a follow-up survey in which we asked teachers what effect the Roadshow had hadon their students, on themselves as teachers, and on the school community.

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Post-event questionnaire to students

Figure 1: Student feedback (comparing primary and secondary)

Figure 2: Student feedback (comparing states)

From the survey we found that primary students responded more positively to the event than secondary students (Figure1). This may be because the content of the quiz questions was more suited to the intellectual level of primary students.
Across the three states, Tasmanian students responded more positively than students from the other states (Figure 2).
One possible reason for the relatively muted response in Victoria may be that the major event was held in a suburb of
Melbourne, a multi-cultural city where students have more access to authentic Japanese language and culture. But the
total rate of satisfied and somewhat satisfied was more than 90 percent in all states, so we can say that the Roadshow
was successful in engaging students.

Post-event questionnaire to teachers
In order to find out how teachers perceived the program, we collected their comments and analysed them. We categorised
the comments under four key words: entertaining, educational, teaching ideas, networking.
First of all, the entertaining aspect was positively evaluated by teachers who answered that ‘the range of (quiz) questions
was really varied and students found it interesting’. Some teachers found the program educational because ‘students
learned new things about Japan that they can’t learn at school’. Other teachers commented that the quiz ‘helped toemphasise the importance of learning a language in a new way’. The program was educationally beneficial not only forstudents but also for teachers, as it gave them some teaching ideas and techniques which can be applied in the classroom.

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Furthermore, as several different schools participated in the event, it was a good opportunity both for students and teachers
to build networks between their peers from their area. Some teachers even mentioned that mixing students from different
schools had a positive effect on their identity as learners. It is very important for students to recognize that they belong toa Japanese-speaking community, and we as teachers should support them in raising their awareness of this.

Follow-up survey to teachers
We conducted a follow-up survey three months after our first roadshow in Tasmania to ascertain if there were any ongoing
benefits, asking teachers three questions.
•••

To the first question, ‘Have you noticed any changes in your students’ attitudes towards Japanese learning?’, manyteachers responded that students have been more motivated since the roadshow.
To the second question, ‘Have there been any changes in your thinking regarding Japanese teaching or in yourclassroom practices?’, some teachers responded that they have tried to use more Japanese or include moreculture in their classes. From this feedback we can say that positive changes were evident in students and teachers.
However, to the third question ‘Have there been any changes in the attitude of the school community and students’families?’, the majority answered ‘There was little change’ or ‘No’. Parents and particularly principals have an
important role to play in decision-making concerning languages in schools, but this result tells us that it is difficult
to change their attitudes.

School Leader Fellowship Program
OutlineThe School Leader Fellowship Program is a one-week program which provides an opportunity for school principals
and administrators to explore Japan and gain an understanding of the benefits of Japanese language learning for theirstudents. The program comprises a public authority visit, a school visit, networking opportunities, cultural experiences andsightseeing. The first program was held in February 2016, and 20 school principals and administrators participated.

Feedback
After the program we collected feedback from participants via email, and 13 of 20 participants responded. We asked threequestions to find out how and to what extent the program influenced participants’ perception of the Japanese program in
their school.
••

To the first question ‘Overall, how would you rate the tour?’, all participants responded with ‘Excellent’.
To the second question ‘To what extent was the tour useful for you to think about Japanese language education?’,almost all participants responded with ‘To a great extent’. One participant commented that the program made him
realise why language education was important and why Japanese was so important for Australia.

The last question asked the principals if the program had influenced how they saw the Japanese program within theirschool. We identified the following five types of responses:•••

First, the program has led participants to better understand the Japanese program in their schools. One principal
commented that he felt ‘more affinity and understanding of the place of Japanese language education in school’.
Another principal mentioned that the program increased his awareness of the potential value of the Japanese
language program.
Second, the program has led participants to improve and expand the Japanese program and curriculum. One
participant has made arrangements with teachers ‘to improve the curriculum, improve the language used in class’,
and another has started to expand the number of year levels which offer Japanese at their school.
Third, the program has led participants to improve ways of promoting their Japanese program. One participant
commented that the program made him/her fully committed to publicising how successful, dynamic and strong
the Japanese program is at his/her school and promoting it further on the school website and information days.

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•

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Fourth, participants have recognised the importance of cultural understanding in language learning through theprogram. One participant understood that ‘the language needs to be taught within the context of the culture andboth elements need to be part of the program to make it more effective’, even adding a comment that ‘just learningto speak the language could be an empty experience without the cultural context and understanding.’
Lastly, some participants have started to create links with Japan, such as establishing a sister school program andorganising a student tour of Japan. One participant whose school already has a sister school wishes to strengthen
the existing program to create stronger links with the sister school.

Participants identified some aspects of the program that could be improved. One participant suggested time during theorientation for sharing brief background presentations on each other’s school Japanese program. Another suggested adaily de-briefing and reflection session. A further suggestion was for a follow-up evaluation of the long-term effects of the
program. This feedback has shown us that there was a need to not just focus on the in-Japan part of the program, but
to see it as part of an ongoing project in which participants would continue to network and support Japanese language
education in their regions.

How can teachers be powerful advocates?
From the feedback above we learned that the Nihongo Roadshow had a significant impact on students and teachers,
as did the School Leader Fellowship Program on principals and administrators. However, teachers are obviously key
persons in advocacy, as they have contact with students, principals, and parents on a daily basis, and have therefore more
opportunities to advocate the Japanese program in the school community. But how can teachers be powerful advocates?
What do they need? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a supplementary survey with the help of 124 of theteachers who participated in the JFSYD Intensive Seminars and a number of state PD sessions. We asked two questions,as seen in Table 2, which teachers rated on a scale from 4 to 1.

Q1: How effective do you think the following methods are for advocating Japanese study? Please rate from 4 (effective)
to 1 (ineffective).
• Paper materials (e.g. flyer, pamphlet)• Online materials (e.g. video, website, movie)• Promotional activities (e.g. students contest, cultural event)• Training session for teachers in advocacy skills
Q2: How important do you think the following items are as information for advocacy? Please rate from 4 (veryimportant) to 1 (unimportant).
• A list of educational institutions where students can learn Japanese• A list of organisations where students can potentially apply their Japanese language skills• Hearing about the experiences of those who have learnt or are currently learning Japanese• Information about Japan and the Japanese language
Table 2: Questionnaire for advocacy survey

Effective methods for advocacy
Regarding the first question, all items except paper materials were perceived as effective or quite effective. An advocacy
training session for teachers was particularly highly rated (Figure 3). This indicates that teachers think they should take thelead in advocacy and gain the skills required.

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Figure 3: Effective methods for advocacy

Important information for advocacy
Regarding the second question, all of the information listed was perceived as important, but teachers thought that hearing
about the experiences of those who have learnt or are currently learning Japanese was particularly important (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Important information for advocacy

To summarize, there are four essential elements involved in advocacy: teachers who advocate, up-to date and handy
materials, workshops or sessions to gain advocacy skills, and networks to connect these elements. And advocacy materials
should contain information such as personal experiences and pathways to the future.

Findings and Conclusion
In order to boost students’ engagement, providing opportunities to connect to Japanese language and culture through a
program such as the Nihongo Roadshow is highly effective in remote areas. However, the Roadshow was less effectivein cities where access to Japanese language and culture already exists. Secondly, while the Roadshow had an impact on
students’ engagement in the short to medium term, it is not clear how it will affect students in the longer term. Therefore,
we should consider other possibilities for encouraging and maintaining student engagement.
The School Leader Fellowship Program had a significant impact on principals and administrators in leading themto recognise the importance of intercultural understanding and Japanese language programs in their own schools/
states. We need to follow up the relevant school programs to see if there is a long-term flow-on effect on the schools
and their communities.

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The supplementary survey revealed that materials and resources alone are not enough for advocacy, but advocacy
skills and networking are also crucial. The next step will be to find what kinds of skills are required and how we canacquire and share them.
Despite the challenging situation we are facing, Japanese is still a leading mainstream language in schools taught byenthusiastic teachers who maintain vibrant teacher associations with strong networks around Australia. The JapanFoundation is very keen to support initiatives of teachers and their organisations and to collaborate with them in building
and sharing strategies for advocacy of Japanese language learning.

Bibliography
Haxhi, J. 2010. Keep It Flying! Japanese Language Program Advocacy. The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles Advocacy Kit 2010. <http://www.jflalc.org/jleadvo-kit.html>
Isoyama Watanabe, M. 磯山・渡邊眞紀. 2016. Beikoku no Nihongo kyōiku ni okeru advocacy「米国の日本語教育におけるアドボカシー」 Amerika ni okeru
Nihongo kyōiku no kako / genzai / mirai『アメリカにおける日本語教育の過去・現在・未来』<https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/project/japanese/teach/research/
usreport/> 2016年7月25日参照
Kokusai Kōryū Kikin 国際交流基金. 2015. Kaigai no Nihongo kyōiku no genjō 2015nendo Nihongo kyōiku kikan chōsa yori 『海外の日本語教育の現状2015年
度日本語教育機関調査より』. Kokusai Kōryū Kikin国際交流基金.
Lo Bianco, J. 2009. Second languages and Australian schooling. Australian education review, 54, 40.
Semba, T. and Y. Nakajima千馬智子・中島豊. 2016. Tasmania-shū ni okeru advocacy katsudō no kokoromi: Nihongo Roadshow no jirei kara 「タスマニア州
におけるアドボカシー活動の試み－Nihongo Roadshowの事例から－」, in Kokusai Kōryū Kikin Nihongo kyōiku kiyō 12『国際交流基金日本語教育紀要』第12号、73–88.

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Contributor
Biographies
Liberty Campbell is the Catholic Education Commission’s representative on the Languages Advisory Panel, the project
officer for Languages in the Broken Bay diocese (NSW) and teaches Japanese at a Catholic boys’ high school in Sydney.
Her particular area of interest is in supporting teachers to meet the various demands on them to embed numeracy, literacy,differentiation, cross-curricular content and intercultural competencies in more coherent and considered ways. She is also
the author of the Jblog textbook series and a closet Crayon-Shinchan fan.
Kathleen Duquemin holds an MA in Applied Linguistics, and Graduate Degrees in both Japanese Language and Primary
Education. She has been involved in curriculum development for second language education, and as a writer and curator
in the development of digital resources for Japanese language learning.
Shingo Gibson-Suzuki teaches Japanese at Taylors Lakes Secondary College (Vic) where he is also the eLearning Leader
and Coordinator of LEAP accelerated learning program years 7 to 9. He was a part of the Language Learning Spaces
project of Education Services Australia, and has presented at JLTAV conferences and The National Symposium in Japanese
Language Education. He was a finalist in the Victorian Education Excellence Awards in 2014 and 2015 and in the Polycom
Teaching Excellence Awards in 2013. Shingo founded and moderates the Japanese Language Teachers of Australia
Facebook Group, with over 2000 members from around Australia.
John Hajek is Professor of Italian Studies and director of the Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-cultural
Communication (RUMACCC) at the University of Melbourne, as well as founding President of the Languages and Cultures
Network for Australian Universities (LCNAU). An experienced linguist, and teacher of European and Asian languages, he is apassionate advocate of high-quality languages education and also of new ways of motivating multilingualism and language
study in Australia.
Kelly Harrison has been teaching Japanese for seven years in Queensland and has been teaching CLIL for two years.
Kelly studied Japanese at high school, then at the University of Queensland and also for one year at the Kitakyushu
City University. Her interest in CLIL programs stems from a desire to see students improve their speaking proficiency
and confidence.
Taku Hashimoto was a foundation teacher in the Japanese Bilingual Program at Wellers Hill State School (Qld). The program
began in 2014 and today encompasses around four hundred students from Years 1 through to 4. Taku has played an
instrumental role in the program’s ongoing success, and is believed to be the first Japanese administrator in an Australianpublic school.
Cathy Jonak was formerly a Language Consultant at the Japan Foundation, Sydney. Cathy taught Japanese in high schools
in Sydney before joining the Japan Foundation, where her work included teacher professional development around Australia
and New Zealand, and resources development.
Nathan Lane has been teaching Japanese in Victorian Government and Catholic secondary schools for the past 17
years. He is the Director of Pedagogy and Innovation at Presentation College Windsor (Vic). Nathan has presented atstate, national and international conferences and has been involved in resource development and external assessment
for students studying Japanese at secondary level. He is President of the Japanese Language Teachers’ Associationof Victoria Inc. (JLTAV).

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Mayumi Mitsuya is a Language Consultant at the Japan Foundation, Sydney. Mayumi taught Japanese in language
schools and universities in various countries before joining the Japan Foundation, where she has been involved in teacher
professional development around Australia and New Zealand, and resources development.
Susan Palmer has been employed for the past ten years as a part time teacher of Japanese language and culture at
Balgowlah Heights PS (NSW), where she has developed a unique integrative Japanese program with a collaborative andintercultural learning focus. She has over 30 years of Japan-related experience and a deep affection for a country she
refers to as her second home. Susan first lived in Japan as an exchange student and subsequently returned to Japanfor several years to teach in a Japanese high school after completing a BA in Asian Studies (ANU) and a Grad Dip Ed at
University of Canberra. Susan attributes her success in the primary classroom to these rich experiences.
Natalie Pearce is an experienced and passionate primary school Japanese teacher. She has also worked as a Curriculum
Consultant in Western Australia and taught Language Teaching Methodology at Curtin University in 2015 and 2016.
Robyn Spence-Brown is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and linguistics, Monash
University (Vic). Robyn has a long-standing interest in the teaching of Japanese at both school and tertiary levels, and has
been a joint author of two major reports on Japanese language education.
Andrea Truckenbrodt lectures in Language and Literacy Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Her
research interests focus broadly on improving pedagogy, programs and participation in Languages Education. She isparticularly interested in literacy-based approaches to Languages teaching and CLIL. Andrea was involved in writing theAustralian Curriculum Languages for German. She has had a long-term involvement with a group of practising Japaneseteachers creating units of work around Japanese picture story books.
John Webster has been a teacher for 31 years, 29 of them as a Principal. John commenced his principalship in small
schools in Western Queensland. His current school is Wellers Hill State School in central Brisbane.

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NSJLE2016 Symposium
DAY1 Session Abstracts
KeynoteLanguages are valuable – make them visible
Sheereen Kindler - Glen Eira College (Vic)
A school culture that supports the learning of languages is vital to the success of any language program. Language teachers
can sometimes feel isolated and struggle to get the support they need to really promote the enormous value learning alanguage has to their community. At Glen Eira College we have worked diligently as a team to embed a culture that values
language learning across our community.
Sheereen will speak from her point of view as a principal as to how language teachers can best engage their principals andtheir community in the value of language learning for their students. She will provide practical ideas as to how teachers canmake languages more visible in their school and gain the confidence of their leadership team in promoting a culture wherelanguages are valued by students and parents.

School Leader Fellowship Tour: The Positive Impact of taking
school leaders to Japan
Anne de Kretser - MCJLE
Sheereen Kindler - Glen Eira College (Vic)
Roger Page - Nossal High School (Vic)
Margaret Pickburn - Roberts McCubbin Primary School (Vic)John Webster - Wellers Hill State School (Qld)
Karen Webster - Department of Education WA
Advocacy is an important and integral aspect of language teaching in Australia. Many organisations in Australia work at
promoting Japanese language education, helping teachers and schools involved in Japanese programs and conducting
professional learning to promote excellence in the teaching work force. For the most part, advocacy and programs are
aimed at teachers who are already passionate about Japanese language education; but change often necessitates reaching
the decision-makers.
In February 2016 an initiative of Yutaka Nakajima, the then Manager of the Language Department of The Japan Foundation,
Sydney and Deputy Manager of The Japan Foundation, Sydney, was realised with a tour to Japan escorting 19 educational
leaders. The Japan Foundation School Leaders Fellowship Tour was a week-long tour to Japan with participants comingfrom all over Australia and from every educational sector. The aims of the tour were to introduce participants to Japan andthe benefits of learning about Japanese language and culture, and to showcase the culture of Japan and the ease of travelin country.
The tour was very successful, and participants – mainly school principals – found it both interesting and educational in regards
to learning about Japan and Japanese language education and how it can work across the curriculum. This presentation will
outline The Japan Foundation School Leaders Fellowship Tour, the aims and outcomes, and includes participants speaking
about their experience and how it has influenced their understanding of Japan and Japanese language education and theimpact on Japanese language programs.

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Social Media Tools to Enhance Collaboration with Students
and Colleagues
Shingo Gibson-Suzuki - Taylors Lakes Secondary College (Vic)
Since the public introduction of Facebook in 2006 and a growing number of smartphone users, our existence in the virtual
community in one way or another has become a norm in today’s society. Checking our phones in the morning has also
become part of everyday routine in order to keep track of what is happening to others connected, average users check theirphones more than 2000 times every week.
What if we could take advantage of this habit and turn it into professional development by connecting with other educators
around Australia? What if students could collaborate with other students outside of school hours to communicate with eachother in Japanese under your supervision?
In this session, I will be sharing my findings on the use of social media tools to connect with your students as well as otherJapanese teachers around Australia focusing on the benefits and issues. I have been utilising Facebook groups with mysenior classes to provide a supportive learning environment for formative assessments and communication hub since 2012.
I have also founded the Japanese Language Teachers of Australia Facebook group in 2014, where I witness highly valuable
professional networking every week.

Hiragana Asobi Karuta – Japanese Competitive Card game based on
Kyogi Karuta
Kazuhiro Ueno - Ashburton Primary School (Vic)
Hiragana Asobi Karuta is a Japanse competitive card game based on Kyogi Karuta. It is inspired by ‘Chihayafuru’, a Japanese
anime. This version is arranged especially for non-Japanese people. It’s a card game, but it is like a sport. This game is very
simple and most importantly it’s fun. Learners can pick up a lot of Japanese words without even noticing. It is suitable forPrimary and Secondary school students to help them develop vocabulary.
Kyogi Karuta is a Japanese traditional game using the classical Japanese anthology of poems called ‘Ogura Hyakunin Isshu’.
The oldest one was written more than a thousand years ago. Kyogi Karuta is a one-on-one game. Each player randomly
selects 25 cards and places them in the game area. The rest of the cards are called ‘Kara-fuda’ that means dead cards andthe players don’t use them in the game. A reciter randomly picks a card and reads it aloud. The players find a matching card,then swipe or touch it as fast as they can. The player who clears his/her own territory is the winner. There are more than amillion people playing Kyogi Karuta in Japan. Because of ‘Chihayafuru’ fever, more Japanese people are now interested in it.

Developing a better understanding of Japanese sentence structure
Richard Webb - Raw Lisard
For students new to Japanese, one of the biggest challenges is that the fundamental grammatical structure of Japanese
sentences is completely different to what they are used to. English relies on word order and prepositions, while Japanese
depends almost exclusively on particles, with word order playing only a minor role. It takes most students years before they
fully understand the role that particles and word order play.

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When confronted with a simple sentence such as 私は元気です, students intuitively believe that は means ‘is/am/are’because, in English, word order determines meaning. It often doesn’t occur to them that this might not be true. In addition,
the difficult nature of は results in particles being explained in detail only in the context of simpler ideas, such as thoseexpressed with を or に. The result is that the true purpose of particles – to define the role of the word that precedes them– is not fully understood.
Building a solid understanding of sentence structure, and the role of particles therein, should be the first step to learning
Japanese. Beyond this, each step should be thoughtfully planned to allow the student to see precisely how each new concept
fits within this framework. I have applied this approach in my book, 80/20 Japanese, which has been very well received byteachers and students alike. An outline of the framework taught in this book can be found at https://8020japanese.com/
japanese-sentence-structure.

How to teach heritage language using 文科省国語教科書
Masako Nagayama - The University of Melbourne
The number of children living outside Japan but who have a connection to the Japanese language through family is increasing.
A new kind of student, within the realm of Japanese language education, now exists – the Heritage Language Learner. In
this talk, I would like to share my experiences teaching Japanese as a Heritage Language to secondary school students andthose attending weekend ethnic school classes, using 文科省 (もんかしょう) 国語 (こくご) 教科書 (きょうかしょ). I would
also like to provide an opportunity for Japanese teaching professionals to share their opinions and experiences regarding theHeritage Language style of teaching.

Oh The Places You’ll Go: The Importance of Education Cooperationin Australia-Japan Relations
Sarah McFadden - Department of Education and Training
Education cooperation remains an integral component of Australia-Japan relations. Japanese is the most popular foreign
language studied in Australian schools and universities, and Australia is the most popular destination for Japanese school
study tours and sister-school agreements. An employee of the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training, Sarah
McFadden gives life to the policy rhetoric surrounding people-to-people connectivity and Asian literacy. Sarah will share
her Japanese language journey spanning from studying individually by correspondence in coastal NSW right through tostudying at one of the top ranking universities in Tokyo. There are a range of career opportunities in government for Japanese
language speakers. The Department of Education and Training has a long-standing relationship with Japan’s Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding. Partof this cooperation involves an annual reciprocal officer exchange program. Selected to represent the Department of
Education and Training on the 20th anniversary of the MEXT officer exchange program, Sarah conducted research into
Japan’s vocational education and training system during a three-month secondment at MEXT from April to June 2016.
Japan’s vocational education system is undergoing significant reforms and these feed directly in to the Abenomics reform
agenda. It is an exciting area of education cooperation and Sarah will share her research findings as well as highlights fromher experience working in the Japanese bureaucracy.

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Inspiring Years 9 and 10
Megan McLaughlin - Melbourne Grammar School (Vic)
Included in my 2008 teaching allotment were two Year 10 Japanese classes for which the study of Languages wascompulsory, but not universally popular. For a variety of reasons the levels of confidence and achievement varied greatly
within the classes. Since then I have been actively trialling and refining a range of approaches for responding to theseperennial challenges:
1. How to meet the individual learning needs of each student
2. How to enable students to clear the hurdle of poor motivation
This workshop will explore the activities, planning ideas, style and manipulation of the physical classroom that I have been
experimenting with in three schools over the last nine years. Each of these schools had different structures and end points
for compulsory LOTE, but the challenge for the teacher is essentially the same, and the flexible approach I have developed
assists me to respond to these differences. Student reactions to this research will also be considered.

JTAN NSW : ‘Japanese Teachers Advocate Nihongo!’
Sally Mizoshiri & Teruko Sharif - JTAN NSWThe Japanese Teachers’ Association of NSW was established in 2005 as a non-profit educational organisation for all teachersof Japanese in New South Wales. Its acronym is JTAN. The main aims of JTAN are to provide a place of mutual support andprofessional development for member teachers of Japanese in NSW.
In this presentation we outline the history of JTAN, the reasons for its formation and the meaning it gives our NSW members.
We provide illustrations of advocacy in the community and in schools and give in-depth examples of activities and PD
opportunities we provide our NSW members and their students of Japanese.
We work hard to promote our subject and provide valuable learning opportunities for our members and their students. We
also work to counter the prevailing ‘Monolingual Mindset’ pervading sections of the community, and we come to present on
our successes over the past decade in NSW. We encourage all Secondary School Japanese teachers from across Australia
to join us.

Marugoto: A Japanese Course for Adults adapted for the Nossal HighSchool Adult Learning Environment
Shelley Warner - Nossal High School (Vic)
Students begin their studies at Nossal in Year 9 and additional foreign language study is compulsory for one year (students
at Nossal are predominantly bilingual) The retention rate has historically been approximately 30% to Year 10, dwindling to
10-15% at VCE. While these are relatively good numbers, I wanted to see them increase, so I set about looking for an up-todate, interactive and flexible course that would cater more specifically to modern language learners.
When the Japan Foundation produced the Marugoto Course A1 and A2 supported by the online learning platform ‘Marugoto
Plus’ (http://www.marugotoweb.jp/) for the first two stages, and an additional E-book/Web based platform for the first
10 lessons of stage 1 (‘Nihongo Starter Book’), I was inspired. I trialled the texts and supplementary resources along with
Marugoto Plus and Nihongo Starter and the ‘Facebook lounge’, and I had the beginnings of a Course that included the essential
elements I sought – a wide range of formative assessments strategies, easily differentiated learning activities within an upto-date and interactive course. I integrated this course into the Nossal Learning platform and with the addition of Language

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Perfect (with Marugoto materials) and a supplementary script booklet, I had the makings of a new and innovative program
for learners of Japanese.
Most recently, after meeting with Japan Foundation representatives, I have included the one area I felt was missing – HighSchool life in Japan. The Japan Foundation also created ‘Erin’ – a learning platform about an exchange student spending halfa year at a Japanese school (https://www.erin.ne.jp/jp/) and this fantastic resource has added another new and exciting
dimension to the course.

Not just ‘token technology’ – web tools that really work
Kathleen Duquemin - Gardenvale Primary School (Vic)
Technology is changing the way that students learn. In order to keep up with learners, we as teachers also need to hop on
the bandwagon and change the way that we teach. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to a series of web toolsthat are being used in a Primary second-language classroom not only to engage students, but also to enrich the teaching
and learning of Japanese and increase literacy. Through the use of tools such as Triptico, Powerpoint and Postposit, they willlearn how to create engaging and effective learning environments that target specific skills such as reading and listening.

Japanese Popular Culture Enthusiasts in Japanese Language Courses
Taeko Imura - Griffith University
As revealed in the Japan Foundation reports, teachers of Japanese language are convinced that many students study
Japanese because they have an interest in features of Japanese Pop Culture (JPC) like anime, manga, drama, video
games and J-pop. This paper is based on a qualitative study that examined the characteristics of JPC enthusiasts whotake a Japanese course at a multi-campus university. The analysis is based on 38 students, self-identified JPC fans who
participated in semi-structured small group interviews. They were constantly comparing JPC with Western counterparts,
claiming that JPC is different and unique. It appears that JPC is very engaging not only for continuation of Japanese study, butalso for personal development. They were fascinated by story lines, artistic appeal and the cognitive challenge associatedwith cultural differences. It was evident that JPC has been woven into their lives and is occasionally used to relax and escapefrom a busy life as well as providing a drive to hold one’s head up to when things get tough. The participants were awarethat JPC offers benefits for learning casual conversation, listening to natural speed and exposure to everyday culture. This
paper has an implication for future Japanese language education and for development of a pedagogically sound curriculum
using JPC.

Grammar in the Senior Secondary Classroom:
Flipping all over the place
Julie Devine - Star of the Sea College (Vic)
The presentation looks at some tools and strategies to deal with the age-old problem of how to cater for the varying levelsof achievement and motivation in senior grammar classes. How do we make time in our lessons for reinforcement andextension activities? How do we support our weaker students? How do we move beyond the presentation and lecture modeand get our students actively involved in their own learning? This session will look at an enquiry-based approach to grammar
introduction and a three-tier system using videos and online support material to allow for differentiation and personalised
learning in the classroom. The aim is to create space for motivated students to do some higher-order activities using thetarget pattern to solve problems and create scenarios. Less motivated students have time to complete basic exercises andstruggling students have some time with the teacher in smaller groups.

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Japanese language as a tool for learning in Humanities and Social
Science (HASS) classrooms: Positioning students’ knowledge ofJapanese as a resource
Marianne Turner - Monash University
In the Australian Curriculum two of the general capabilities to be addressed in all subject areas are: ‘intercultural understanding’and ‘critical and creative thinking’. But there is limited guidance for Humanities and Social Science (HASS) teachers on how
to address the general capabilities. In this presentation I propose that this opens an opportunity to advocate for Japanese
language by embedding it across the curriculum in creative ways. Japanese language teachers can help HASS teachers
draw on what the students are learning in their Japanese language classroom in order to help all students learn in the HASS
subject area. This in turn can serve as motivation for the students’ language learning. I will draw on data from a small-scale
study in which a Japanese language teacher collaborated with a monolingual (in English) History teacher to bring advanced
Japanese language students’ knowledge of Japanese into a Year 8 History classroom. It was found that students werevery engaged in this initiative. In the presentation, ways to link students’ engagement to the development of intercultural
understanding and critical and creative thinking in HASS subject areas will be explored.

Students learning from other students
Sue Metcalfe - Kardinia International College (Vic)
My presentation is based on my personal goal to broaden my teaching and student learning using the Kath Murdoch inquiry
indicators, looking at different ways to encourage and engage my students to practise and remember their hiragana. With
the indicators as a check list, I aimed to get students to use classroom spaces better, in small group activities and rotations.
I got my Year 6 students to teach each other the hiragana characters, drawing upon their personal strengths to develop
the activities they were going to use. This short program was very successful, as evidenced by my pre- and post-test
results. I then asked them to teach hiragana to the Year 3 students; the aim was to develop and improve the way Year 3
students remembered hiragana. I booked in times for Year 3 classes to visit Year 6. My Year 6 students developed all theirown activities and needed to be mindful of the key areas they were focusing on (listening, writing or reading) in the miniprogram they designed. The feedback from both groups of students was quite positive. This process has resulted in a better
relationship with my students and I am more confident in letting go of the teaching and letting the students have more
responsibility for their learning.

Stories Inspire Language Learning
Julie Campbell, Kae Raffaele & Trudi Sampson - Cornish College (Vic)
Lois Booth
Students bored with language textbooks? This presentation demonstrates how to engage students, both primary andsecondary students, through literature. Fiction and non-fiction books are used to develop innovative units of work to motivateand extend students’ learning and creativity. Speaking, listening, reading and writing language skills are developed throughthese literacy units.
SECONDARY RESOURCE: Hana’s Suitcase
Hana’s Suitcase is a non-fiction children’s book by Karen Levine based on the story of a Czech girl who died in the Holocaust.
The story of Hana Brady first became public when Fumiko Ishioka, a Japanese educator and director of the Japanese Tokyo
Holocaust Education Resource Centre, exhibited Hana’s suitcase in 2000 as a relic of the concentration camp.

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This presentation will show you how to design an engaging unit of work for Year 9/10 students using the text and aninteractive online educational resource. Relevant language includes self-introductions, nationalities, families, daily routinesand locations. Higher-level thinking skills are developed.
This innovative unit was developed as an inquiry-based unit titled ‘Language, Culture and Life Experiences Shape Identity’and was integrated with the English and Humanities Year 9 curriculum. It is a suitable non-fiction text for CLIL methodology.
PRIMARY RESOURCE: Yoshi’s Feast
Yoshi’s Feast is a fictionbook written by Kimiko Kajikawa which centres around the lives of two neighbours. The setting forthe story is in the Japanese city of Yedo, and through the illustrations intercultural understanding is developed with glimpsesof kimonos, villages, fan dances and many other aspects of Japanese culture and life.
This presentation will show you how to design a unit of work with language developed through numeracy, literacy, dance,music, physical education activities and games. The unit incorporates the opportunity to develop a Japanese Day around thestory with another ‘neighbouring’ school.

Adventures With Sister School Relationships
Andrew Mitchell - St Mary MacKillop College, Canberra
Four years ago, the language faculty at St Mary MacKillop College was in a bad place. It was decided to raise the then-low
profile of languages in the school by creating sister school relationships and bringing students from Japan and other countries
into the school. The exchange program running at the school has been a contributing factor to increased enrolments inlanguages and making languages visible in the school community. This session will look at the development of MacKillop’s
relationship with the remote community of the Oki Islands in Shimane Prefecture, a UNESCO Global Geopark. Particular
ideas that will be shared are how the relationship has enhanced our study tours to Japan, the use of technology to engage
with the Oki community and other Japanese schools while in Australia, ways of engaging with the community through theschool curriculum and how this has enabled students to make real world connections with their learning. Participants will
be encouraged to share their own experiences and ideas to enable all to benefit the most from these types of relationships.

What are creative and imaginative texts and what do they have to
do with teaching Japanese?
Natalie Pearce - Swan Christian Education Association (WA)Some teachers have been a bit puzzled by the Creating Strand of the Australian Curriculum. This practical workshop
explores ideas and examples of the successful use of creative and imaginative texts in Japanese classes. It shows ways
for students to engage with texts such as cartoons, poems, stories and plays to enhance their Japanese learning. There arealso examples and suggestions for students to create their own imaginative texts. This workshop is suited to both primaryand secondary teachers.

NSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS77‘JF Japanese e-Learning Minato’ – More Options and More
Opportunities for Japanese Language Learning
Mari Nobuoka - The Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute, Kansai
The Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute, Kansai has developed a Japanese integrated learning platform site, ‘JF
Japanese e-Learning Minato’ (‘Minato’). Minato places importance on encouraging learners to actively find and expand theirown lifelong pursuits, and to satisfy their interests and curiosities. In order to realize this, Minato has two main concepts: it
is a place ‘to learn Japanese with more options’ and ‘to meet other like-minded people’.
In terms of ‘to learn Japanese with more options’, Minato provides a variety of choices for learners to select courses basedon their interests – comprehensive learning, sub-culture, character etc. – or by course type – the level, study style (self-study
or tutor support), study category, study period, language of explanation etc. For those who want to use Minato ‘to meet otherlike-minded people’, it has an international feature letting learners communicate with Japanese language students aroundthe world on various topics. It helps learners deepen their understanding and knowledge of Japan, Japanese people and
the Japanese language. Connecting with people also helps learners to reduce any sense of isolation in online coursework.
E-Learning lets people access Japanese language study and connect with a worldwide community anytime, anywhere.
In this session participants will familiarize themselves with the concept and the content of Minato, and then discuss future
prospects of this exciting new e-Learning program. We want Minato to give learners more options depending on theirindividual circumstances and the needs of each country and area. In order to realize this, we look forward to opportunities
to cooperate with Japanese language teachers at The Japan Foundation all over the world.

Japanese Performing Arts – Rakugo, Kamishibai & Kyogen
Jarrod Hoare
Sit back, relax, and let’s have a laugh together with some Rakugo, Kamishibai and Kyogen. After all, 『笑う門には福来る』 –Good fortune and happiness come to those who smile and laugh! Through his entertaining and interactive storytelling, Jarrod
will take you on a journey to re-discover your own passion for Japanese language and culture. Be inspired by innovative ways
to continue spreading knowledge, culture and joy in your own schools and communities!
Teachers will benefit from:
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innovative ideas to incorporate Japanese language / culture in classrooms
exciting new ways to link to the Australian Curriculum (Intercultural Understanding, Critical and creative thinking,Drama, the Arts, Japanese language and culture)learning ways to foster students’ creativity while enhancing their Japanese language and culture skills
networking with passionate performer to tailor workshops to school needs
discovering free online teaching resources for Japanese language / culture
opportunity to enquire, request and suggest learning collaborations
experiencing various traditional Japanese Performing Arts LIVE!
inspiration to re-kindle your own passion for Japanese language / culture

Students will benefit from:
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first-hand inspiration for their own Japanese language and cultural studies
exciting examples of the endless possibilities that Japanese language offers
the opportunity to personally meet and ask questions directly
exploring ways to blend their creativity together with Japanese language and culture
discovering free online learning resources for Japanese language / culture
experiencing various traditional Japanese Performing Arts LIVE!

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Retaining and motivating students of Japanese to thepost-compulsory years and beyond
Robyn Spence-Brown - Monash University
This session explores the reasons why some students continue with their language studies into the Senior Secondary
years, and why others do not. How important is liking/being interested in a subject, and what role do perceptions of future‘usefulness’ or of ‘level of difficulty’ play? How do different school and educational structures influence the decisions ofstudents? Drawing on a major survey of year 11 students of Japanese which I conducted nationally in 2014, as well as on thelatest research internationally on what motivates study of a second language and what determines student subject choices,
I will address these and other questions, and set the scene for a discussion of what teachers can do to encourage students
to continue their Japanese studies.

‘Front loading’ through film
Jenn Brown-Omichi - Catholic Education Melbourne
Language teachers often tell me how difficult they find it to create a student-centred learning environment in a languages
learning and teaching context. Differentiation is a targeted process that involves forward planning, programming andinstruction. Addressing issues associated with differentiation can be very challenging in any learning area, but Languages isperhaps more challenging than some other learning areas.
Several years ago I started creating films for and with students. Film gives students opportunities and benefits in effectively
and more independently learning and applying their acquired knowledge of language through film. I refer to the process ofcreating a unique teacher resource to support a unit of work as ‘front loading’. Working in a CLIL space, I am convinced of
the value of using film as a stimulus to self-paced, independent learning in languages.
To view recently created films using functional classroom language, please follow these links:
https://goo.gl/lHG8PV or https://youtu.be/3Gi3jHlvXDw

Targeted differentiation – how to spend more time with yourstudents, and less in front of themLiberty Campbell - St Paul’s College, Manly (NSW)The theme for this year’s symposium underpins the action research project I have been working on with junior classes inJapanese. The program is based on ensuring my students are visible and valuable, as well as their learning in Japaneseclasses. It is inspired predominantly by the research of Sarah Pavy and Carol Ann Tomlinson.
Pavy notes that one of the deterrents to language uptake is the lack of progress indicators in many classrooms. Students
simply can’t see the progress they are making, and many fail to see the relevance of the learning beyond the classroom.
Their learning is neither visible nor valuable. Tomlinson, an inspiration in differentiation strategies, has produced some
excellent research on the learning profiles of students. She emphasizes the importance of not teaching, merely in thelearning profile that suited you as a student. The more I read the more I struggled to perceive how I as teacher could makethe best differentiation choices every lesson for every student on any given day. My research has thankfully revealed atechnique that doesn’t require me to. The choices are instead made by students as part of our targets program. Content ismapped to lessons activities, with students choosing to demonstrate their learning of each topic from among a range oflistening, speaking, reading, writing and intercultural understanding tasks. Teacher feedback is individualised, and a code
word hidden in the feedback, to encourage student reading of the feedback and demonstration of personal improvement in
subsequent tasks.

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What makes a program ‘Visible and Valuable’?
Jan Chalmer - Gippsland Grammar (Vic)
Many Primary teachers of Japanese face the challenge of providing a language program within very tight time constraints.
How can their programs be ‘visible and valuable’ in perhaps only one hour (or less) per week?
This presentation will highlight a number of tactics and ideas to address this issue. Some of the tactics which will be
addressed are
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CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES. Classroom routines which help maximise learning time. A speaking
strategy learned from Whole Brain Teaching will be demonstrated, together with the implications of a ‘No hands up
to answer’ rule.
LEARNING INTENTIONS AND SUCCESS CRITERIA. The work of John Hattie and Dylan Williams has shown theimportance of these. Help teachers focus on lesson aim! Helps student gain a sense of progress.
USING FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT. Online tools now abound (e.g. Kahoot, Socrative and Quizalize) for creating multiple
choice quizzes presented in engaging ways. Great for student review and consolidation. Teachers can use data togauge effectiveness of teaching and for planning next step.
PROVIDING A PURPOSE FOR LEARNING. Purpose may be as simple as presenting a role play or creating a video, but
important for students to know at the outset: a goal to work towards.
ENGAGING ACTIVITIES. Whether using paper flashcards or online tools, a variety of ‘games’ will be showcased.
EVENTS. Cultural Festival. Visit from Sister School. Incursion. School Trip. Involving parents and local media.

The origins of Japanese language education in Victoria
Catherine Bryant - Genazzano FCJ College (Vic)This paper explores the origins of Japanese language education in Victoria. The first Japanese language classes for school
children in Victoria began on Saturday mornings at MacRobertson’s Girls High School in Melbourne in 1935. The Saturdayclasses were set up by Victorian Education Department officials as a ‘special experiment’ teaching just two languages,
Japanese and Italian. These classes continued, and more than 30 years later they became known as the Saturday Schoolof Modern Languages. In 1988 the school became known by its current name, the Victorian School of Languages (VSL).
With a history now spanning 80 years, the VSL continues to offer Japanese programs to Victorian school children today. The
particularity of the school is in the complementary role it plays in supporting delivery of language programs by mainstream
schools. Archival documents and interviews form the basis for this historical analysis of the origins of the Japanese language
program at the school. Japanese classes emerged during a period of ‘aggressive’ monolingualism in Australia between thewars. The paper looks at the original personnel who taught the VSL’s early Japanese classes and who pioneered theircurriculum. It also presents insights into the early pedagogical practices in the Japanese language program at this particularschool along with original data on student enrolments. By presenting historical perspectives of Japanese language educationin Victoria, this research aims to shed light on the challenges that face Japanese language education today. The paper isbased on a PhD study which was supported by the Victorian School of Languages PhD Scholarship in memory of Professor
Michael Clyne.

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NSJLE2016 Symposium
DAY2 Session Abstracts
KeynoteFrom ‘I love Lucy’ to ‘I love languages’: using popular culture andpromotion to make languages visible and valuable
Professor John Hajek - The University of Melbourne
Language education in Australia and other English-speaking countries has long faced a series of perennial and often
intertwined challenges. Amongst the long list of issues which manifest themselves in schools and society more generally
are the following: (a) the low value assigned to multilingualism, and thereby also to language learning; (2) anxiety aroundadequate proficiency in English – also tied inextricably to general literacy or numeracy skills; and (3) misguided ideas
about English itself as the world’s lingua franca. While we have developed and engaged a long list of serious responses
to address many of these concerns, experience shows they haven’t been particularly effective in shifting attitudes andbehaviours. I argue here that while these responses are all valid, it’s time also to consider a new tack – that uses popular
culture in surprising ways (even turning it on its head) to capture people’s imagination or attention. In this lecture I show
how classic examples of Anglo pop culture can be used unexpectedly to reduce resistance to language education andmultilingualism. I also show how at a very practical level Japanese and the world it represents, including popular culture,
lend themselves to positive and effective language promotion in our school communities.

Making Japanese language films to support language learning
Greg Brown - Ruskin Park Primary School/Kalinda Primary School (Vic)
Making Japanese language films is a great way to motivate students to use their Japanese in meaningful and fun ways. It
is also an excellent way to introduce technology into your classrooms. Filmmaking used to be a difficult task which required
a lot of specialised knowledge and equipment, but with the advances in computers and mobile devices, especially iPads,
anyone can now easily make their own film.
I would like to share my experiences of filmmaking with my students and our journey to make Japanese language films
for the Video Matsuri competition. While I’m not an expert, some of the skills and experiences I have picked up along theway may encourage other teachers to try making a film with their students. I will demonstrate how to use iMovie, Green
Screen and other special effect apps to make any film look special. I hope to inspire other teachers to make video resources
which can be used by all teachers to support Japanese language programs and help motivate students with their language
learning.

Connecting Japanese with the Community
Stephen Grant - St Philips Christian College - Port Stephens Campus (NSW)Japanese is often labelled a subject for female, introverted and/or socially awkward students. It is also seen as an irrelevant,useless, and token subject. For Japanese to survive and prosper, it must be seen as a relevant and attractive subject for
all students. Japanese needs to be positively marketed to all students, parents and staff. We need to communicate ourNSJLE 2016 PROCEEDINGS

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personal connection with the language passionately, confidently and creatively at the same time as we educate them with
relevant facts and figures.
Since I started promoting Japanese in NSW schools (my labour of love), two former students have become Japaneseteachers, with others planning to follow. Despite initial opposition, Japanese is now embraced by a wide range of students
and parents at my present school.
Connections established with Japanese at St Philips Christian College:
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PDHPE: Establishing the martial arts-based Japanese Cultural Society (JCS).
SPORT: Establishing Japanese symbols as sporting house emblems on sashimono and headbands
ART: Origami and shodō
MATHEMATICS: Kanji numbers
SOCIAL SCIENCES: JCS training and study
ENGLISH: Comparison of sentence structures and use of metalanguage
LOCAL COUNCIL: Establishing a Student International Committee for monitoring interregional exchange between thetwo countries, reporting to council, assisting Japanese department and promoting language at school
STAFF: Promoting other KLAs in the Japanese classroom
PARENTS: Schoolwide recognition of student achievement; inclusion, empowerment, promotion of Japaneserelated work; and study opportunities and evening Japanese classes for parents.

Promotion of Japanese requires teacher passion, persistence, patience, energy investment, solid rationale for teaching it,
and a willingness to constantly market the language. This presentation shows ways to establish and nurture Japanese as avisible and valuable language in our communities.

Kanji learning attitudes and kanji learning strategy use:
Relationships to Japanese learners’ orthographic background
Amelia Hawkins - Footscray City College (Vic)This study (based on 2014 Honours research at Monash University) explores kanji learning attitudes and strategy use inlearners from alphabet and character orthographic backgrounds. Classroom composition is changing, as classes come toinclude learners who have existing knowledge of Chinese characters alongside those who do not, addressing different tasks
in learning kanji. This emphasises the need to understand kanji learning in multilingual classrooms.
An online questionnaire was completed by 40 learners from an upper-intermediate Japanese class at an Australian
university, supplemented by semi-structured interviews with seven learners. Data analysis revealed that learners fromboth backgrounds used repeated writing strategies and strategies associated with the kinaesthetic sensation of writing withhigh frequency. Descriptive statistics indicated some significant differences in strategy adoption among learners from thetwo orthographic backgrounds: association with first language knowledge occurs among character background learners,
and mnemonic strategies are used by alphabet background learners. Correlational analysis revealed statistically significant
relationships between attitudes and strategy use for character background learners.
The findings highlight the complex relationships between orthographic background, kanji attitudes and learning strategy use.
Understanding the different attitudes and strategy use within the two learner groups is important for educators, in order toprovide tailored support in kanji learning in a way that is not biased by preconceived notions related to learners’ orthographic
background.

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Personal Encounters with Palaygo
Chris Graham - Kelmscott SHS (WA)Making language learning relevant and engaging for students, whether they are starting at a primary, secondary or tertiarylevel, is a basic mission statement for all second language teachers. Research conducted by the Asia Education Foundationin 2012 suggested that ‘persuasive personal encounters’ is one of the key ingredients for building student demand in thelanguage classroom. Creating opportunities for our students to have ‘personal encounters’ is now an integral part ofdeveloping a clear purpose for commencing study of another language and continuing it beyond the initial compulsory years.
The interactive platform Palaygo provides students with exceptional opportunities to communicate with other students in thetarget language Japanese. It uses a unique palette system which clearly delineates Japanese word order and complements
the growth of productive language skills. The Palaygo community also encourages students to build friendships throughregular communication facilitated by networking technology, both in the classroom and at home. The links to The Australian
Curriculum Languages document will be immediately obvious to anyone who has been involved in its development.
This session will showcase practical applications of Palaygo, and will give participants time to utilise the Palaygo palette on
mobile devices and to workshop practical examples that will ultimately inspire our students to become second language
advocates in their own right.

Using Picture Story Books to enact the Australian Curriculum
Languages
Andrea Truckenbrodt - Melbourne Graduate School of Education
This presentation explores the potential of picture story books to deliver quality outcomes for language learners through thelens of the Australian Curriculum Languages (ACL). I argue that picture story books have a particular status and currency
within primary school context which Languages teachers can readily exploit, particularly with reference to L1 literacy
practices. I demonstrate how picture story books support learners’ language and literacy development using authentic
Japanese, translated and English materials. I then discuss the picture story book as an intercultural experience. Referencing
Scarino and Liddicoat’s (2009) model of intercultural learning, I show how learners have the opportunity to notice, compare,reflect and interact with Japanese, Australian and other relevant languages and cultures through picture story books.

Seduced by Sumo
Katrina Watts - Australian Sumo Federation
A mild-mannered high school teacher set off for Japan to develop her Japanese language skills and wound up as a television
sports commentator. She went to learn more Japanese and to teach English, but ended up studying Russian and Spanish as
well, and travelling the world as an interpreter. All because of sumo. Many who go to live abroad find the culture of the hostnation intriguing, and the outsider often ends up becoming a specialist in some aspect that the locals take for granted. So it
was for this teacher with sumo. This is a personal tale of how a knowledge of the Japanese language and thirst for learning
led to an interesting and rewarding life, far beyond expectations – and an exploration of the seductive power of sumo. This
high-profile spectator sport is a valuable part of Japanese culture and a window on Japan for the world.

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Rethinking assessment in Japanese
Nathan Lane - St Columba’s College (Vic)
Research in the area of formative assessment by Hattie (2012), Hattie and Timperley (2007) and Black and Wiliam (1998)
highlights the importance of students receiving ongoing personal and whole class feedback as they learn in order to maximise
their potential and to assist in making progress. This presentation will focus on the implementation of an assessment modelin a secondary Japanese languages program that is underpinned by formative assessment practices.
The presentation will focus on five areas:
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what formative assessment looks like in the Japanese classroom
the role of ICT in formative assessment
how assessment practices were changed to focus on formative assessment and the constant monitoring andmeasuring of each students’ knowledge and understanding, both during the lesson and at the end of the lesson, andresponding to their individual needs
listening to the voices of the students explaining the impact of these strategies in their learningteacher reflections on the success and improved student learning outcomes as a result of implementing a range offormative assessment strategies in the Japanese program

A lesson a day: Increasing intensivity in primary language classes
Cindy Pitkin - St Peter’s Girls’ School (SA)From 2013 to 2015, St Peter’s Girls’ School participated in a research project conducted by Professor Angela Scarino and herteam at the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures at the University of South Australia. The three-year project piloted
some program models that were designed to strengthen language learning in schools. St Peter’s Girls’ School adopted themodel of a lesson a day with a primary school Japanese class (Year 4 in 2013). Increased time on task resulted in greater
language acquisition, as expected. It also gave the students greater understanding of Japanese culture and the way thelanguage works. The more frequent lessons meant that we were able to spend time exploring the language to a greater
depth, thus engaging the girls’ critical thinking skills and giving them a wider view of the world, improved logic and analyticalskills and greater levels of cognitive skills and creativity.

Making conceptual learning visible and valuable for students
learning the Australian Curriculum: JapaneseAmanda Pentti - Queensland Department of Education and Training
Concepts are the big ideas that students work with. The use of the word ‘concept’ rather than ‘topic’ in the Australian
Curriculum: Languages is deliberate. It marks a shift from description to conceptualisation. The Australian Curriculum forJapanese invites students not only to describe facts or features of phenomena, situations and events from the Japanese
language and culture, but also to consider how facts and features relate to concepts. For example, a description of a house
can lead to a consideration of the concept of ‘home’ or ‘space’ in both Japan and Australia. This shift is necessary because it
is concepts that lend themselves most fruitfully to intercultural comparison and engage learners in personal reflection andmore substantive learning.
In this workshop, participants will explore the concepts of the Australian Curriculum for Japanese, and how they can beused as curriculum organisers to plan for, teach and assess the Japanese language program. The Japanese language andculture being learned offer the opportunity for learning new concepts and new ways of understanding the world. Concepts,
combined with knowledge and skills, develop intellectual depth and deeper understandings.

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45 minutes per week – How the Australian Curriculum is working
in a Primary School
Kathleen Duquemin - Gardenvale Primary School (Vic)
The Australian Curriculum: Japanese is a comprehensive outline of how Japanese language education should look inAustralia. However, since the launch of the document, the reality of adopting it within the primary classroom has been a hotitem of discussion. In this presentation, participants will be shown a model of how the Australian Curriculum: Japanese isworking – quite effectively – in a government primary school where class time is approximately 45 minutes per week. The
effectiveness of this program is partly due to a strong oral/aural and kanji focus in the first two years (F – 1) and delaying
introduction of hiragana until Year 2, when students have built up their phonemic awareness and are ready to – very quickly– learn hiragana and apply it to their steadily growing second language lexicon.

Exploring activities to develop General Capabilities using real
voices from contemporary Japan through the Click Nippon website
Yoko Nishimura-Parke & Junko Nichols - The Japan ForumThe Japan Forum (a public-interest incorporated foundation based in Tokyo) actively provides support for language education
overseas that is in line with the Australian Curriculum. One such activity is hosting the Click Nippon website, which provides
content related to current Japan, stimulating students’ thinking by ‘Meeting Others and Self in Depth’ and by appreciating
values and beliefs of others. This session will explore ways of developing students’ language skills through activities using
real voices from contemporary Japan. We will focus on the article from the Click Nippon website about the Japanese artist
who turns ‘rubbish’ into art. We first walk through the Click Nippon website. Then we will introduce the article in focus andtake note of the beliefs or values of the artist – the essence of the article. We also share the practical ideas for student
activities which provide opportunities to develop Critical and Creative Thinking and Intercultural Understanding. The topic of
the article in focus, Art using ‘rubbish’, connects well with Sustainability as a cross curriculum priority. Teachers are also
encouraged to share and discuss activity ideas using materials from the Click Nippon website.

Making keigo more visible within the classroom
LuLu Vitali - Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School (Vic)
The politeness system (particularly the use of honorifics) is undergoing complex changes in contemporary Japan whichchallenge the practices and expectations of both native and non-native Japanese speakers. This presentation will draw
upon elements of my research to demonstrate how keigo is one feature of the language that native and non-native speakers
engage with in a similar way – both are conscious of their status as learners. It will discuss the ways in which ‘ideologies’ ofJapanese speakers are constructed and the variable ways in which speakers engage with keigo.
The presentation will discuss the role that Japanese teachers play in shaping the ideologies of students, and how theirown ideologies as language educators can influence the ways students view the use of keigo. It will suggest ways in whichteachers can make keigo become more visible within the classroom and generate discussion around the extent to whichkeigo is still relevant and valuable in contemporary society, and indeed still relevant and valuable to learn.

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Differentiating the learning of hiragana – with no romaji insight!
Mariel Howard - Swan Christian Education Association Catholic Education (WA) / Kalamunda Christian School (WA)The key objectives of the Australian Curriculum should be the same for all students, but the program as implemented must
offer alternative pathways to students with special educational needs (ACARA, 2012). One of the challenges of Japanese
education is ensuring that all students, regardless of ability and previous experience with the language, can start from thelevel they are at in their hiragana acquisition and still keep up with the common curriculum for the year group. The answer
is not to scaffold weak or new students with romaji. Use of romaji often leads to poor pronunciation as well as delay inmastering hiragana. Furthermore, having to learn the pronunciation of the phonetic romaji that is so different from English
will result in an increased cognitive load rather than a reduced one.
There are several ways to differentiate the learning of hiragana, as well as clever ways to practise and assess hiragana
without the use of romaji. Japanese reading ability is a process that often takes years to master, as it does for the students’first language, especially in primary school. The characters must be learnt in the context of words rather than in isolation,and each new word offers another natural opportunity to revise the characters that form that word. Teaching the hiragana
chart once at the start of the program and then assuming that students can read and write does not work, nor does it
cater for newcomers. Students move at different rates from individual character recognition to being able to read word andsentences. It is therefore essential that all reading and writing activities, including assessment, are differentiated to caterfor all ability levels.

Japanese Bilingual Education: An Alternate Method of Learning
John Webster & Taku Hashimoto - Wellers Hill State School (Qld)
After exploring alternate evidence-based models of learning, Wellers Hill State School launched its Japanese Bilingual
Program in 2014. Research relating to the benefits of bilingual language learning indicates that children who learn in abilingual environment have significant changes to the neuroplasticity of their brain. Brain changes in neuroplasticity increasea student’s ability to switch between tasks and to maintain attention. To maximise these benefits, children should be engaged
in language learning from an early age.
At Wellers Hill State School the Japanese bilingual program commences in Year 1. Students spend 50% of their school week
studying the Australian Curriculum in English; the remaining 50% is spent studying the Australian Curriculum in Japaneseand a Japanese Literacy and Numeracy component.
All Japanese teachers at Wellers Hill State School are Japanese nationals who hold Australian teaching qualifications.
The school uses an authentic CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach in the bilingual program. The
Japanese Literacy and Numeracy program is unique to Wellers Hill and is developed as a spiralling curriculum building on
and reinforcing the previous year’s content.
The objectives of this Japanese Bilingual Program are:
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To improve student learning and outcomes through the development of additional neural pathways.
To provide a Japanese bilingual and global education.
To enable students from all cultural backgrounds to discover and integrate Japanese linguistic and culturalexperiences into their life.
To support the learning of students by teaching Japanese vocabulary linked to the Australian Curriculum as well asother subject areas in order to enhance students’ use of spoken and written Japanese.
To promote the application of language in the real world by using real texts, concepts and functional communication.
To assess students’ progress using a variety of assessment formats including oral, written and culturally appropriate
assessment.
For students to be able to communicate effectively in all four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, in both

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English and Japanese.
For students to be conversationally fluent by end of Semester Two Year 3 and technically fluent by end of Year 6 inspoken and written Japanese.

Training students for work ‘readiness’ – Japanese work-integrated
learning
Kumiko Katayama - Griffith University
Griffith University in Queensland recommends that students in all its degree programs and courses have work-integrated
learning (WIL) experiences. The research shows there are significant benefits that WIL curricula provide to students, including
professional/ disciplinary skill and knowledge development in the context of application/ employment and work ‘readiness’.
As the demand for graduates to possess employability skills or graduate competencies, increases, there is an obvious
benefit and advantage for students engaged in WIL curricula because of the increased likelihood that they will develop in
these areas as a consequence of that engagement.
Based on this principle, I have been offering a Japanese WIL program at the Gold Coast campus of Griffith University. This
program is offered as a component of a third year Japanese course. The WIL component involves 20 supervised hours in aworkplace and the goal of this experience is to offer students the opportunity to experience a workplace where Japanese
is used and prepare for their entry to a career. Prior to the WIL, students are trained within the classroom to use the formal
and vocational language common to various contexts. They are also introduced to Japanese business manners. WIL gives
students the opportunity to use this classroom-learned language, develop confidence in their language ability, prepare forentry to a career and be evaluated on their ability in an authentic context.
This program has been successful to the extent that feedback from students and our industry partners are both positive andsome students are offered a job or internship after the completion of the WIL component.

Collaborating for advocacy
Mayumi Mitsuya & Cathy Jonak - The Japan Foundation, Sydney
Australia has the fourth largest number of learners of Japanese in the world (Survey report on Japanese-Language education
abroad 2012), and Japanese is the most learned language in primary and secondary schools. However, in many regional
areas there are very limited opportunities to connect with Japanese language and culture, and this can lead to Japanese
language learners feeling disengaged from their learning.
Recently Japan has been losing its economic power and as China’s presence has been expanding, stakeholders’ interest
in Asian languages has been shifting from Japanese to Chinese. Faced with this situation and the decline in languages inschools in general, the Japan Foundation, Sydney (JFSYD) has come to recognise that advocacy for Japanese language
education is critical, and has implemented two programs, Nihongo Roadshow and the School Leader Fellowship Program.
The Nihongo Roadshow provides games and activities to encourage and inspire learners of Japanese, professional
development opportunities for teachers and includes a focus on advocacy. The School Leader Fellowship Program provides
an opportunity to school principals and administrators to explore Japan and gain an understanding of the benefits of Japanese
language learning to their students.
In this presentation we will outline the Roadshow and Fellowship programs, and report on the outcomes of the programs
based on feedback from participants. We will then consider how the JFSYD, classroom teachers and other stakeholders can
combine our strengths to advocate Japanese in schools.

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Differentiation and Deep Learning
Noburo Hagiwara - Kolbe Catholic College (WA)‘In a healthy classroom, what is taught and learned is relevant to students, personal, familiar, and connected to the world
they know.’ ‘In the healthy classroom, students have the opportunity to work and learn in ways that are most comfortable
to them as individuals’ (Carol Tomlinson). In this session, participants will explore many practical examples of differentiationto achieve deep learning for all members of the classroom, with or without technology.

Using the Language Learning Space resources to support
implementation of the Australian Curriculum: Japanese
Kylie Farmer - Languages Education Consultant
This session will introduce teachers to the wealth of free resources available on the Language Learning Space (lls.edu.au)
for Japanese, including:••••

Demonstrating a range of game-based student challenges in rich graphic novel format with strong culturalconnections for students in years 5-9
Information and demonstration of some of the 1000+ teaching resources, and how these can be stored, shared andused to create learning pathways for classes and individual students
Indicating how resources are aligned with Australian Curriculum: Japanese
Introducing and exploring the range of professional learning resources that will appeal to teachers of all year levels

Targeted Interventions for Reading Comprehension in JuniorJapanese
Nathan Williams - Bundaberg North State High School (Qld)
Bundaberg North State High School has successfully partially implemented ACARA (Languages) before the development ofQueensland C2C resources. This presentation will present the school as a case study to Japanese teachers from different
states and territories, providing insights into how a rural school has overcome the negative stereotype of language learningand is slowly building a more rigorous and successful Year 7-9 Japanese program. In Semester 1, 96% of students inan accelerated Year 7 Japanese cohort received an ‘A’, the other 4% receiving a ‘B’; meanwhile, 97% of students in our
mainstream cohorts received ≥‘C’ (22%=B, 75%=C). In Semester 1, 85% of students in mainstream Year 8 Japanese cohorts
received a ‘C’, and 22% a ‘B’. This presentation will begin by showcasing our 7-9 Scope and Sequence, Assessment Items,
Marking Rubrics, and Japanese Reading Comprehension activities. Explicit Instruction, QAR, Literacy Warm-Ups, and 6
Steps to Reading Comprehension will all be quickly modelled to demonstrate how to use the strategies to intervene totarget students at risk of achieving a ‘D’ or ‘E’ to create their potential to achieve a ‘B’ or ‘C’, as well as 7 Steps to Writing
Strategies to develop written ability within a short amount of time. The presentation will illustrate how I am using Japanese
to teach English concepts and vice versa by teaching the same cohort of Year 8 English students for Japanese, and how thisimproves the confidence of students in the goal of becoming bilingual. The presentation will be engaging and encourage theinteraction of the audience to demonstrate strategies, which teachers can trial by taking home the resource kits that will behanded around the room.

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Voices of students: Secondary school student decisions on Japanese
language learning in regional Victoria
Masako Chikushi - Ballarat Clarendon College (Vic)
Over the past decade, there has been a growing awareness of the declining number of students in second language educationin secondary schools in Australia. When looking at the current state of Japanese Language Education, knowledge aroundthe challenge of engaging students in second language learning is important for understanding students’ perceptions about
their learning. The individual stories of their learning experiences and the choices involved in learning a second language isfundamental. My research aims to identify the student voice in order to understand students’ meaningful participation in
Japanese language learning in relation to their academic, social and community life. If students are alienated rather thanengaged in learning, then it is likely that they are similarly alienated in developing and understanding the importance oflearning a second language. Through individual interviews and observations, I have analysed students’ real-life experiencesin Japanese language learning. Students who are currently taking Japanese classes have been interviewed, as well as
students who have discontinued. In this way, I have reached an understanding of some of the various factors that influence
the decision-making process to study or not to study Japanese. The analysis, from the stories of the students along withobservations and immersion in a school culture, will add to the nuanced understanding of the secondary school students.
This research will enhance student language and cultural understandings leading to them becoming more self-aware andproductive citizens in a global world. The benefit of the research centers on gains for individual students and their language
learning. This makes student-centered learning visible. It also adds value to Japanese teacher education. It is essential toprovide advocacy for all students and educators so the focus on regional students is beneficial for both the local community,
state, national and international levels.

Taking Assessment Online with Education Perfect and Languages in
ActionTrudi Wigg - Education Perfect
Are you maximising the motivation of online learning and assessment with your students? Education Perfect is here to
help! This is a demonstration of Languages in Action, a course for Japanese Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced students
covering vocabulary, grammar, and culture with listening, reading and writing activities all neatly bundled in Education Perfect
Smart Lessons. The demonstration will also provide an introduction to Education Perfect’s hiragana writing component, as
well as online assessment features, including Proficiency Testing, and what we can offer teachers to support reporting anddifferentiated curriculum.

Media Studies - a new approach to secondary Japanese
Kelly Harrison - San Sisto College (Qld)
Japanese Media Studies is a Year 10 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) program introduced in 2016, which
involves the teaching of content (Media Arts) and language (Japanese) simultaneously. This approach requires the explicit
teaching of language, as and when it is needed to support the students in their content learning. The course covers the topics
of Japanese cooking shows, animation, advertising and representations of women in the Japanese media.
The course is opt-in and still covers the essential grammar and vocab from the standard Year 10 Japanese. The classcovers more than double the amount of content of the standard course within the same time frame. The efficiency andeffectiveness of the CLIL approach allows this. Teacher observation and student results suggest that student proficiency
and motivation have improved dramatically. The course is also being analysed for effect size according to Visible Learning
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Japanese confidence. Teacher motivation has also increased – seeing the students flourish due to the engaging nature of
CLIL has been very encouraging. The class is full of laughter and a sense of accomplishment.

Code switching for student control of L2 communication
Susan Taylor - Brighton Beach PS, St Mark’s Dingley PS (Vic)This paper explores the idea that code switching enables functional communication with full student control from the
beginning of language learning. Furthermore, students quickly begin to identify as L2 speakers. Student response has beenstunning. Focussing on high frequency words, my aim has been to de-construct the language classroom walls and build
a culture in our school community where Japanese becomes a normal, comfortable, expected and easy communication
option everywhere all the time.
I propose stepping stones between English and Japanese. Each step being neither fully English nor fully Japanese is a
powerfully creative zone engaging high flexibility of mind. Teacher anxiety to have ‘correct’ language must therefore be
put aside to create the environment for creative experimentation. This session will outline the stepping stones, share theteaching approaches and student/teacher/community responses, and lead robust discussion about the possibilities in thisidea.

My iJourney; Creating valuable learning experiences throughintegrating iPads into the learning workflow
Brianna Winsor - Brisbane State High School (Qld)
Do your students currently have iPads (or tablets) for learning? Is your school considering it? Does it all feel a bit overwhelming?
It did for me too! But don’t worry. I would like to share my story of how in under one year I managed to transform the way
my students and I use iPads in the Japanese classroom to enhance learning. I will discuss how I continue to integrate
the use of iPads into my lesson workflow and the effects it has had on my pedagogy and my students’ learning, which
include improved student engagement and outcomes, extending learning beyond the classroom, freeing up more time forinteracting and supporting students in class, and even reducing my own workload and stress!
Students at Brisbane SHS participate in a BYOD iPad program. For almost two years I simply used the iPads as a ‘tack on’ to
my regular program, which included the standard things like paper notebooks, textbooks, worksheets and MP3s. The iPadwas basically a tool for playing script game apps, vocab quizzes, internet research and word processing. I basically used it
as a ‘reward’ after the ‘real classwork’ had been completed.
It wasn’t until the start of this year that I started to realise the endless potential these devices offer and started utilizing themas an integral part of the learning process. Come along as I share my transformational practice that includes activities for:
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sharing resources and differentiating learning
regular formative assessment and data collection
giving students timely, detailed and meaningful feedback
facilitating collaborative group work and online peer feedback
creating online learning communities
flipping the classroom
improving pronunciation
practising speaking, listening and digital note taking
building meaningful relationships with students
practising language and creating digital content in an authentic context

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Discover Japan as the ideal school tour destination
Mariko Tatsumi - Japan National Tourism Organization
Would you like to discover Japan with your students?
The aim of our presentation is to encourage Japanese language teachers to organise school tours to Japan. We provide thelatest updates in regards to travelling in our country. These updates will help not only teachers who have never organised
school trips to Japan before, but also well-experienced teachers for organising their next trip.
The Japanese Government holds school tours to Japan in high regard and this attitude is clearly demonstrated in the draft‘Action Programme towards the Realization of a Tourism Oriented Country 2015’ which highlights all the practical policies.
The Japan National Tourism Organization recognises that school trips are significant to overall tourism, as students havethe opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of Japan which helps build good relationships between other countries andJapan. Moreover, school trips have the potential to influence young travellers to visit multiple times through their continued
interest.
An extraordinary time is awaiting you and your students in Japan!