In this section, Takako Aikawa, Wakana Maekawa, and Masami Ikeda-Lamm explain how their teaching is orientated toward helping students gain an active command of the Japanese language, with the goal of helping students communicate with Japanese-speaking people.
All students in Japan are required to study English. But after eight years of mandatory classes, many students still can’t hold a simple conversation in English, although they’ve memorized lots of words and learned a lot of grammatical patterns, which enable them to translate English sentences into Japanese. They can understand the structure and the words, but they often can’t communicate with people. Likewise, some of our students come to Japanese I saying that they’ve tried to teach themselves Japanese, but it didn’t work, or they took Japanese courses in the past, but they can’t actually use what they’ve learned. They can’t converse in Japanese.
When they start, students don’t know anything about speaking Japanese. And of course, they have to learn some vocabulary and grammar to be able to use the language. So we have one grammar lesson, followed by six drill sessions. In the grammar session, we introduce a rule and talk about its grammatical and cultural aspects, and things like that, mainly in English—especially in Japanese I, we have to talk about those things in English! But in drill sessions, we don’t allow any English. From day one, we communicate in Japanese only, and students aren’t allowed to speak English. It’s hard at first, but I always tell my students, “Imagine that you’re thrown into the middle of nowhere, in a really small town in Japan, where nobody speaks English. Just assume that I don’t understand any English, and that we have to survive using only our Japanese.” Some people get overwhelmed, but everybody’s at the same level.
"We want our students not simply to study the vocabulary and the grammar, but also to be able to use the language in a linguistically and culturally proper manner."
We also make sure that they bow, which is a very important part of interactions in Japanese culture. So from day one, we introduce those gestures, and all the greetings and the different levels of politeness, such as the formal way of saying “good morning” versus the casual way. And then they have to choose between those two greetings depending on who they’re talking to. When they say good morning to an instructor, they will use the formal greeting, but to their classmates they will use the casual one.
As we state in our syllabus, we want our students not simply to study the vocabulary and the grammar, but also to be able to use the language in a linguistically and culturally proper manner. That’s what an active command of language means to us.
