Practicing Learning Contracts while students have their teacher's help will encourage students to look at their learning consciously and critically. Learning Contracts encourages learner autonomy by addressing the different needs and interests of students, differing learning styles, and multiple intelligences . In this paper, a brief language learning course using Learning Contracts is described. There are several reasons why we decided to take this approach. First since the students were going to be in Japan, I wanted them to take full advantage of the living language around them.
Authentic materials are plentiful in Japan.
I wanted a program that would utilize or investigate something that they heard at a dinner table at their host family. Secondly, with that much choice of materials around them, I wanted them to pursue their own academic and professional interests within Japanese language learning. The students were undergraduate, graduate students and working professionals. If they wanted to read a brochure of a company in which they hoped to work as an intern in the near future, I wanted to give them an opportunity to do so. Finally, the logistics and varied levels of the group made Learning Contracts more realistic to run a class.