Alliance Summer Institute in Japan for Teachers

The Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese invites applications from teachers of Japanese at all levels for a six-week language, culture, and technology institute in Japan during summer 2002. The institute will be conducted in collaboration with Japan's National Institute for Multimedia Education (NIME). Funding from the U.S. Department of Education under the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad program will cover all travel, lodging, and classroom costs for participants, who will be asked to pay only for their meals (estimated at $1,050 for the six weeks). The institute will begin on June 17 and end on July 27, 2002. Participants will work with faculty at NIME and also with teachers in Japanese schools to develop classroom materials using advanced instructional technology. A five-day trip to Nagano Prefecture and numerous shorter excursions in the Tokyo area will allow participants to visit classrooms, meet local teachers, gather materials for their own curriculum units, and collect realia. The institute will be based in Makuhari New Town, which is located halfway between Tokyo and Narita airport and is the site of a number of educational, commercial, cultural, and governmental facilities. Advanced language instruction for non-native speakers will be available as part of the institute, and the culture and technology portions of the curriculum will be adjusted in response to the backgrounds and interests of the participants.

Applications for the institute will be mailed to all ATJ members, as well as members of other Japanese language professional organizations, during the month of November. The deadline for receipt of applications is January 15, 2002. Applicants will be notified in February of the results of the selection. Contact the Alliance office: 303/492-5487. atj@colorado.edu. www.Colorado.EDU/ealld/atj/ATJ/nime.html.

Seiichi Makino to Receive ADFL Distinguished Service Award

Princeton University professor and longtime ATJ Board and committee member Seiichi Makino has been named recipient of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL)'s Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession. ADFL is a division of the Modern Language Association, and the award will be presented to Makino-sensei at the annual MLA conference in New Orleans in December. This article is reprinted, with permission, from the Fall 2001 issue of the MLA Newsletter.

The ADFL will present its seventh Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession to Seiichi Makino, professor of Japanese and linguistics at Princeton University. The award honors eminent scholar-teachers for exceptional contributions to the field of foreign languages and literatures at the postsecondary level. As his peers attest, the record of Makino's professional activities is the record of the development of Japanese studies in this country.

An admired scholar with a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois, Makino uses his firm grounding in both English and Japanese linguistics to explain difficult points in the structure of Japanese to the satisfaction of learners and specialists alike. He has published books on Japanese linguistics as well as two fundamental reference grammars and coauthored a two-volume language textbook, Nakama. His books, the tools of the trade, can be found on the shelves of all Japanese language teachers.

Makino is considered an exemplary teacher, and his career spans English teaching in Japan and, in the United States, twenty-three years of Japanese teaching at the University of Illinois and at Princeton since 1991. It is, however, in the training of other teachers that Makino has left his most indelible mark on the profession. In the 1980s he directed the Middlebury Summer Japanese School, the most distinguished locus of summer Japanese instruction available to students in this country, and in the 1990s he created a summer program leading to the M.A. degree in Japanese pedagogy at Columbia Teachers College. He was one of the original architects of the language-specific proficiency guidelines through the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and has been a tireless advocate of the Oral Proficiency Interview as an objective means of measuring competency in Japanese. His insistence on high pedagogical standards was of particular importance during the formative boom years of the 1980s, when many speakers of Japanese, with no expertise in teaching, were needed to fill positions and required training.

Makino has also served the profession generously through association and editorial work, notably as a board and committee member of the Association of Teachers of Japanese. He has served as a reviewer of different kinds of language learning materials in Japanese, reviewed countless applications for grants and study programs, and promoted Japanese language education in the secondary schools.

Makino's efforts have helped Japanese language study advance to a position of prominence equal to some of the more commonly taught languages. As one of his nominators said, the enthusiasm he invests in and derives from his work is legend. Intellectually vigorous, modest, kind, and good-humored, he exemplifies the very best in the profession as teacher, scholar, mentor, and leader. Makino-sensei, congratulations!.

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