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■What is a Picture-based Japanese Language Education? |
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Children with foreign roots often face difficulties in acquiring academic
language in Japan. It is no surprise, as education for speaking, listening,
reading and writing Japanese has not been adequate for those children.
However, for children, learning academic language is not just a matter of
becoming more fluent in Japanese. The lack of academic language skills may
lead to the lack of development in cognitive skills during the youth, an
important period of time when grow their ability to think. We believe that in order for the children to grow healthily with high
self-esteem, it is essential to let children express their power to think,
practice logical thinking and organizing their thoughts in Japanese. When
children are asked what they thought when they saw a picture, they tend to
enjoy expressing their ideas, including the children who has trouble reading
books. Pictures provide cues for children to think and talk, and our role in
this program is to promote children’s efforts by providing language support. In this program, we do not teach Japanese. Rather, we wait for the
children to express their ideas and support them if they have difficulty
using the proper form of language. Children seem to have a rich seed of ideas within them. All they need
is some chance to sprout and grow, eventually becoming fluent in using
Japanese. |
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■The Goal of this Japanese
Language Class -For the Parents- |
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We would like the
parents to understand the goal of our classes, as it is not an ordinary class
that follows school textbooks and as some parents tend to think that their
child has no language problems because the child can speak well, sometimes
even better than their parents. There is a big
difference between being able to speak Japanese and being able to participate
in school’s learning activities, acquiring Japanese necessary for academic success.
In learning activities, children must read and write in Japanese. Even if the
children have no trouble speaking the language, because of the fact that
their mother tongue is not Japanese, they tend to lack vocabulary and have
trouble understanding what they learned in class. Those children are forced
to “think” using inadequate Japanese, and some children come to feel like
“thinking” or “speaking after thinking” is troublesome even though they have
the power to do so. When we listen attentively to those children, we are
often surprised by their rich ability to think. We believe it
is important to practice “thinking in Japanese,” “speaking what we think” and
“organizing our thoughts in writing” over and over again. Through repeated
practice, children become capable of properly expressing their ideas in
Japanese. Most importantly, we believe that this practice leads to
“developing the ability to think.” We hope the
children will grow like a large tree with deep roots by developing their
ability to think while acquiring proper Japanese language skills. |
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■What We Do in Class |
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What we do in
class depends on the level of children’s Japanese skills. For beginners, it may
seem necessary to learn basic Japanese to enable minimum level of
communication including reading and writing hiragana. However, we believe
that children need to have chance to express their ideas in Japanese even if
they cannot speak properly yet. That is why we begun the “Picture-based
Japanese Language Education.” Currently, there are three main programs in our
classes, which are analysis of pictures/picture books, question-and-answer
game and retelling. Through the three programs, we build the cycle to “think
logically in Japanese,” “speak what we thought in an understandable fashion”
and “logically organize what we thought in writing.” Through practice, we
believe that children will naturally become capable of thinking based on
reasons and expressing their ideas in a comprehensive, proper Japanese. |
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Analysis of
pictures/picture books |
We begin by looking at a picture. Children will
begin thinking about the season and time of the picture by looking at the
entire picture before they go into the details. Questions like “what season
do you think it is?” “Why did you think so?” well
be repeated. Children may point at specific part of picture or simply say
words that they know, letting us understand “what they thought.” |
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Question-and-answer game |
We begin by asking questions like “do you like
___?” The goal of this program is to become capable of answering such
questions with reasons. Eventually, the “answers” will be written down. The
style of questions will gradually change. |
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Retelling |
In this program, children will retell a story
they heard in writing. It is not the same as writing the summary. Using
“conjunctions,” children will connect paragraphs in a logical fashion to
construct a story. We begin with a one-minute story. |
Reference:
Sanmori, Yurika. Gengo gijyutu kyouiku no taikei to shidou naiyou [Systems and
Lectures of Language Skills Education], Tokyo: Meijitosho,
1996.