アメリカ東北部は紅葉の季節を迎えて、朝晩はヒーターを入れはじめています。新学期も半ばに なり、中間試験のころですね。お元気ですか。私は人にいつも半分終わったら全部終わったのも同然、と言うので笑われています。「新学期、半分終われば屠蘇気分」、といったところです。シカゴでの ACTFL の大会は 11 月１９日 〜 ２１日です。発表の準備で忙しくしている方々も多いと思います。
First, good news. The Japanese AP (=Advanced Placement) Program will be receiving full funding from the Japan Foundation, the Freeman Foundation, and the Starr Foundation, and it will be developed over the next three years! A formal press announcement will take place on November 10 in Washington D.C. The first Japanese AP Task Force has been established, and AP Program is now on the go!
Two more pieces of good news. We are getting more new members! Remember the Doubling Campaign? Please keep up the good work of inviting one person per member into ATJ. You can now encourage a part-time teacher of Japanese to join us, because the annual membership fee for part-time teachers has been discounted to $35.
More good news is that according to the result of the 2003 Japan Foundation enrollment survey, overall enrollment in Japanese in the U.S. is up 124.1%! Numbers aren’t everything, but this news surely makes us feel good. Please see the inside pages of this issue for a report on the results of the 2003 survey.
Next, let me share with you three major topics that the ATJ Board discussed at the Board Meeting held in Toronto on September 18 and 19. We would like to thank Prof. Yuki Johnson of the University of Toronto, who kindly handled arrangements from A to Z for the Toronto Board meeting and made it very fruitful, enjoyable, and memorable.
The first major agenda item was whether the current name “ATJ” should be changed to something else that can better define the objectives of the Association—and this is not a trivial question. Some of you suggested, in your responses to our survey of the membership last year, renaming ATJ to Association of (Teachers of) Japanese Language and Literature in accordance with the renaming of our journal to Japanese Language and Literature—Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese. Some expressed dissatisfaction with the term “Teachers,” which seems to eliminate scholars and researchers. In last year’s survey, 44% of the respondents voted “Yes” for the change, and 56% voted “No.” After a great deal of deliberation, the Board decided to keep the current name. We also have decided to call the Association in Japanese ATJ ( 日本語・日本文学 ).
Second, the ATJ Seminar will be scheduled all day in Chicago on March 31, 2005. Thanks to the time-consuming efforts of Prof. Yasuko Watt of Indiana University and her Seminar Committee members, we were able to work out a detailed schedule for the Seminar. Proposals for panels and papers were submitted on or by October 31 and are now being evaluated. For the details of the Seminar, please check the website. Full information, including a list of presentations, will be posted there in January and will also be published in the February issue of the Newsletter. The keynote speaker at the Seminar will be Professor Emeritus Takie Sugiyama Lebra of the University of Hawaii, an eminent anthropologist. She will give a speech entitled “A Japanese Scheme for Talking and Thinking From Social to Cosmological,” based on her recent book The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic. All of us are struggling with how to integrate culture into our language teaching, and it is about time for us ATJ members to listen to an anthropologist’s view of Japanese culture. And of course I am looking forward to listening to papers and Special Interest Groups’ discussions.
Third, the Board discussed the International Conference on Japanese Teaching ( 日本語教育国際研究大会 ) as a sequel to the one held in Tokyo this past August 6-7. (Please refer to my report in the September issue of the Newsletter). Being an incorrigible optimist, I announced to the attendees at a reception in Japan the possibility of holding ICJT in the U.S. in the summer of 2006. The ATJ Board has unanimously agreed to the plan, and Prof. Naomi McGloin, the President-Elect, and I are co-chairing the Steering Committee. The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in New York City has generously agreed to let us use its campus as the conference venue. During next month’s ACTFL Conference the Steering Committee will meet to discuss a detailed timeline and content for ICJT. In the meantime, if you have a good idea about topics for panel discussions, please feel free to contact me ( smakino@princeton. edu) with a copy to Prof. McGloin ( nmcgloin@facstaff.wisc.edu.) We would like to incorporate your ideas as much as we can.
このお便り、いつもくどくどと長くなってすみません。それでは、中西部の古都シカゴでお会いしましょう。
牧野 成一
Seiichi Makino