2019 The Japan Foundation Japanese Teaching Methods Program for Teachers ofthe Japanese-Language
Rebecca Li, Matraville Sports High School, NSW
Essential questions:
1. What are the different ways that we can teach about Japan through Japanese?
2. How can we learn about teaching Japanese from other international educators?
These were two key questions that I pondered during the 2019 The Japan Foundation
Teaching Methods Program held in Urawa, Saitama, Japan. The program consisted of 36
teachers from 26 countries. It was a six-week program centred on teaching methodologies
and networking. This was the first year that such a "methodology course" had been held,and it proved to be a big success amongst participants.

PHOTO: Our first day

PHOTO: Presentation about my Japanese teaching context

I had the opportunity to present information about syllabus changes in NSW, Australia andthe ongoing focus that language teachers have in teaching interculturally andcommunicatively. I also was able to hear the context of Japanese teachers in many othercountries. Many were impressed by the innovation in our syllabus, our continued focus onreflecting on identity and culture and overall commitment to providing Languages
education at the primary and junior high school levels. There was great interest inAustralian texts for Japanese learners too, with many teachers from Europe expressing adesire to have similar books written in their own language!
Lectures
The program included many lectures on the topics of:• Second language acquisition• How to teach speaking, reading, writing, listening, vocabulary and culture• How to evaluate and create tests• Our role as a Japanese teacher• How to use The Japan Foundation's textbook and online series: Marugoto• How to increase motivation using the ARCS model: https://www.arcsmodel.com/
The lectures were centred about The Japan Foundation standards. We worked in teams todesign lesson plans that reflected the standards as well as evaluate our own teaching.

JF 日本語教育スタンダード https://jfstandard.jp/

著作権 © The Japan Foundation

PHOTO: The Japan Foundation Standard. Are there any areas that you feel your lessons are catering heavily towards?

PHOTO: Team teaching on the topic of reading

PHOTO: Cultural investigation: Mt Fuji

Excursions
We were able to go on many excursions that also enriched our understanding of Japan andculture. Many of the teachers attending had a keen interest in developing mature agestudents' career opportunities in Japan.

PHOTO: Create your own windchime (風鈴）Projects
We had time to work on our own project. During this time, I used my experience ofworking as a group to create a basic assessment task that I could use for my beginner Year
7 class.
Based on what I learnt during this course, I aim to support a more communicative approachto Japanese teaching. As the whole course was in Japanese and all the participants
communicated in Japanese, it was a real challenge for me to test my own ability. However,from this experience, I feel much more confident in using Japanese in all my classes and aim
to do so in order to lift my own students' ability in speaking Japanese.

Other activities that I plan to incorporate into my teaching:• Greater use of project work
• Interesting ways to understand the intricacies of Japanese language. We had a few
lessons on how to use Corpus to clarify the meaning of specific language. Corpus issimilar to a linguistic library for analysing the meaning of words. If you are interested
in understanding further about Japanese linguistics and meaning, we wererecommended these sites:
KOTONOHA: http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon/ (Japanese corpus research site)
ひらひらのひらがなめがね：http://www.hiragana.jp (To add furigana to Japanese writing)
The Reading Tutor Web Dictionary: http://chuta.jp/ (Dictionary for Japanese to English)NINJAL-LWP for BCCWJ: http://nlb.ninjal.ac.jp/search/ (Corpus search engine)• Providing more opportunities to teach hiragana and katakana concurrently• Using recent news and trends in the class with sites such as NHK news website;
NEWS WEB EASY: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/• Increasing the use of interactive websites such as Marugoto.
MARUGOTO: https://www.marugoto.org/en/
MARUGOTO Plus Japanese Learning: https://marugotoweb.jp/en/index.php
HIROGARU,get more of Japan and Japanese: https://hirogaru-nihongo.jp/en/
Erin’s Challenge! I can speak Japanese: https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/
Japanese in Anime & Manga: http://anime-manga.jp/index_english.html

Reflections
Most of all, the program impressed upon me how important networking is to the businessof Languages teaching. The challenges we each face are sometimes not only within ourcontext, but widespread and commonly felt by many languages teachers around the world.
Through open communication and networking, we can build a community of learners thatare intrigued by Japanese and experience success in using it.
I am very grateful to the staff at The Japan Foundation, Sydney for supporting me in mypreparation, the NSW Department of Education, as well as to the wonderful and expert
staff from Urawa, Japan and other Japanese teachers for their inspiring ideas andperspectives.

Please visit below page for more information about course applications for the next Japanesefinancial year.
2020 Japanese Language Grants: https://jpf.org.au/language/for-teachers/grants/