Call for Individual Paper and Panel Proposals for ATJ Seminar 2005
The Association of Teachers of Japanese Seminar will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Chicago, Thursday, March 31, 2005. The Association of Teachers of Japanese calls for individual and panel proposals for paper presentations in the areas of Japanese Linguistics, Japanese Literature, Japanese Language Pedagogy, and Second Language Acquisition in Japanese. ATJ also welcomes session proposals from the Association’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The deadline will be October 31, 2004. For details, see: (www.japaneseteaching.org/ATJseminar/2005/). If you do not have access to the web, please contact: Yasuko Ito Watt, Seminar Committee Chair, East Asian Languages and Cultures Department, Indiana University, Goodbody Hall 223, 1011 East 3rd Street, Bloomington, IN 47405. Tel.: 812-855-3124 (direct with voice-mail). Fax: 812-855-6402 (Department).
Nominations to ATJ Board Sought
Three new member of the ATJ Board will be elected next spring. If you are interested in seeking a position on the Board, or would like to suggest a colleague for a position, please write to Ken-ichi Miura, chair of the Board’s Nominating Committee, with your suggestions: kmiura@temple.edu.
JNCL-NCLIS Delegate Assembly Report
The Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL) and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (NCLIS) comprise more than sixty educational and professional associations representing more than 200,000 language and international studies professionals. The AATJ (Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese) is a member organization. ATJ President Dr. Seiichi Makino, AATJ's JNCL-NCLIS Official Delegate Dr. Y. -H. Tohsaku, and I participated in this year's Delegate Assembly on May 6-8. I would like to report on some issues that came up during the Assembly: the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP), Title VI of the Higher Education Act, the National Security Language Act, the impact of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the latest on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and the upcomingYear of Languages (YOL).
On May 6, delegates from member organizations were assigned to visit elected officials from the state they represent in order to talk to them about foreign-language issues before the Second Session of the 108th Congress. FLAP was our primary concern as we talked to both Senate and House members. It is funded currently at $16.5 million, and it is the only program supporting foreign language education at the elementary and secondary levels in Japanese as well as in other languages (Spanish, French, Chinese, and Arabic). Unfortunately Japanese has been eliminated as one of the priority languages for selection. President Bush zeroed out the budget this year, and we need to act to continue this program for various Japanese programs at the K-12 level. Another concern at the Senate level was reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), Title VI. This is an important program as it helps American students to study abroad. However, the proposed creation of an Advisory Board is seen as quite intrusive and invasive to the actual program. Another concern was support for the National Security Language Act—HR 3676, which would increase federal investment in foreign language education, specifically in languages of critical need to national security. More concretely, the NSLA:
- Provides loan forgiveness of up to $10,000 for university students who major in a critical need foreign language and take a job in the federal workforce or as a language teacher.
- Provides grants to American universities to establish intensive in-country language study programs and to develop programs that encourage students to pursue advanced science and technology studies in a foreign language.
- Establishes grants for foreign language partnerships between local school districts and foreign language departments at institutions of higher education.
- Commissions a national study to identify heritage communities in the US with native speakers of critical foreign languages and make them targets of a federal marketing campaign encouraging students to pursue those degrees.
At the end of the Friday meeting among delegates, there was a breakout session. One group discussed the No Child Left Behind Act and its impact on foreign language education. In its report published in 2004, the Council for Basic Education outlines the impact of NCLB on the Liberal Arts curriculum and professional development. In high-minority population schools, it found decreases in instructional time and teacher professional development for foreign languages. It is no longer anecdotal that more foreign languages are feeling the impact of NCLB, and Japanese is no exception. Programs, instructional time, and grade levels are being cut in many places across the nation. Under NCLB, Foreign Language is identified as a core subject at the Federal level. However, no national assessment is required, so districts and schools are focusing now on subjects that require assessment. We value what we assess, and we assess what we value. We need to develop a national assessment that will be included in NCLB, so that Japanese stays in the curriculum.
On Friday, we heard a report on National Board on Professional Teaching Standard (NBPTS) certification. The NBPTS was founded in 1987 to set standards for accomplished teachers and create a voluntary system to assess and certify teachers who meet these standards. The Japanese certification was never realized in 2003 and has been put on hold indefinitely. Without a chance to receive that recognition and sometimes financial incentives, Japanese as a subject is unable to convince excellent teachers to stay in the field, unable to encourage new teachers to go into the field, and will become more at risk of losing existing programs. As of now, the World Languages Other Than English (WLOE) certification is only available in Spanish and French at the middle and high school levels. ACTFL, along with the Standards Collaborative project, is negotiating with NBPTS so that more foreign language teachers are eligible to receive the certification.
ACTFL gave a presentation on the Year of Languages. It is a result of House Resolution 170, which designates the year 2005 as "Year of Foreign Language Studies." There will be a kick-off event at the ACTFL conference in November in Chicago. ACTFL has posted suggested monthly activities starting November 2004 on the YOL web site. I would like to see both NCJLT and ATJ get involved with this initiative and try to receive media attention to promote the study of Japanese.
Last but not least, Dr. Y.-H. Tohsaku was elected to the Board of Directors of JNCL-NCLIS. It is Important to have representation of Japanese in the organization.
Reference web sites:
JNCL-NCLIS: www.languagepolicy.org.
FLAP: www.languagepolicy.org/flapcompete.html.
Title VI of the Higher Education Act: www.languagepolicy.org/hea.html.
National Security Language Act: www.languagepolicy.org/HR3676alert.html.
CBE study: www.c-b-e.org/news/nr040308.htm. PDF document: www.c-b-e.org/PDF/cbe_principal_Report.pdf.
NBPTS: www.nbpts.org.
The Year of Languages: www.yearoflanguages.org.
Keiko Schneider,
ATJ Board Member
Report on International OPI Symposium / Pedagogy Forum
The 3rd International Symposium on Japanese Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the 12th Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum were jointly held at Princeton University on August 21–22, 2004. More than one hundred people from Estonia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Korea, and the U.S.A. attended the conference. With the purpose of familiarizing the general audience with OPI and improving OPI interviewing skills among the certified testers, the first day started with an introductory session on OPI (Osamu Kamada, Nanzan University), followed by actual demonstrations, discussions of Intermediate and Superior levels (Mariko Saito of Bunka University and Kazuko Shimada of East West Japanese School), and video-taped demonstrations of Advanced and Superior levels. Elvira Swender, Director of Academic Development at ACTFL, gave a report on the on-going project of revising the description of Superior level due to the increased level of achievement at the higher proficiency levels. Activity reports of the OPI study groups throughout the world closed the first day’s activities.
The second day featured a stimulating keynote speech on the strengths and weaknesses of the current OPI by Prof. Judith Liskin-Gasparro of the University of Iowa, one of the drafters of the original OPI Guidelines. Sixteen individual papers dealing with both OPI and non-OPI data were presented in three separate sessions, demonstrating the enthusiasm for high quality within the research of Japanese pedagogy. Partially funded by the Toshiba International Foundation and co-sponsored by the ATJ, the Symposium and the Forum were organized by Professor Seiichi Makino, President of ATJ.
With more than one hundred testers, Japanese OPI has more testers than Spanish and French. Preparation for the 4th International Symposium in Hakodate, Japan (July 30-31, 2005) has already begun; details will be announced in a future issue of the Newsletter.
Osamu Kamada, Nanzan University