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2013 ADVANCED TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMAPRIL, 2014: BREEZE ISSUE #78
A FREE MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS OF JAPAN & TEACHERS OF JAPANESEMY SABBATICAL AT THE JAPANFOUNDATION'S JAPANESELANGUAGE INSTITUTE IN URAWA
BY NORIKO NAGATA
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, California
I am Professor and Director of the Japanese Studies Program at theUniversity of San Francisco. I teach Japanese language, linguistics,and culture. From October 23rd through December 19th in 2013, Iparticipated in the Japan Foundation’s Advanced Training Programfor Teachers of Japanese at the Japanese Language Institute inUrawa, Japan. The program provided an excellent opportunity topursue my Japanese textbook project. I truly appreciate thededication and hard work the Japan Foundation staff, instructors,and participants put into this very successful program.
My textbook, entitled『道︓⽇本を探る』“The Path: Exploring Japan,” teaches the Japanese language
through the lens of the rich variety of cultural landscapes in historical and contemporary Japan. I visited
fifty-three major cities throughout Japan during the past five years and captured over fifty thousand
photographic and video images for the new textbook. The textbook aims to develop learners’ Japanese
language proficiency to the intermediate and advanced levels, based on the ACTFL and JF standards.
The textbook will incorporate innovative, online exercises in which learners can practice sentence
production and receive detailed feedback in response to their grammatical errors, provided by natural
language processing technology developed by the author. The online exercise program will be an
expanded version of ROBO-SENSEI: Personal Japanese Tutor (Nagata 2004), published by Cheng & Tsui.
One of the distinctive features of the Japan Foundation program was an individual meeting with a program
instructor about my project once or twice per week. Kijima-sensei was the program instructor associatedwith my project. I received detailed comments from her on the content of the ten chapters I had createdso far. I also had a wide range of very helpful discussions with her related to the textbook’s development,including teaching philosophy, chapter components, cultural images, exercise materials, the publishingprocess, and so forth. During the course of the program, the participants delivered initial project
presentations, mid-way reports, and final presentations. They received useful comments from one Privacy - Terms

another and from program instructors. The book is an ongoing project for me, but myexperience at the Japan Foundation has given me momentum toward its completion(photograph).
In addition to our individual research
projects, participants attended a numberof lectures about teaching method,material analysis, course design, andlearning assessment. We also hadgroup discussions, which were fruitfuland constructive. In particular, we learned about the JapanFoundation’s new standards and Can-do activities in detail.
We are now looking for ways to integrate Can-do activities
into our projects.

I had a great time with the other ten participants in mygroup, who came from a very diverse range of locations(Argentina, Cuba, Holland, Jordan, Madagascar, Myanmar,Russia, Singapore, U.S.A.) We attended every session
together and enjoyed many conversations and jokes inJapanese during our joint meals in the institute’s cafeteria.
We went on a memorable Tokyo field trip arranged by theprogram, in which we learned how to make plastic cabbage
and tempura food models of the sort displayed byJapanese restaurants (photograph). We also visited theJapanese parliament building (photograph), and enjoyedspectacular Tokyo views from the Roppongi Hills(photograph).
My program was only one of many. Japanese language educatorsfrom a total of thirty-five countries were participating in different
programs at the institute during my stay. I was stimulated by theirpositive attitude toward Japan and by the discussions I had withthem about their home countries. It was inspiring to meet so manyskilled Japanese educators from around the world. The spread ofJapanese language education is vital in our increasingly globalsociety. The Japan Foundation is playing a central role.

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