ICJLE 2006 Update

More than 300 people have registered to attend the International Conference on Japanese Language Education (ICJLE) to be held at Columbia University in New York City. The conference will take place August 5–6, under the sponsorship of ATJ and our sister organization the National Council of Japanese Language Teachers (NCJLT). The program for the conference can be found in the middle pages of this issue of the newsletter. Plan now to attend! If you have not yet registered, you can do so online at www.aatj.org/conference.html.

In addition, pre- and post-conferences have been planned by the Northeast Council of Teachers of Japanese (NECTJ). The pre-conference (August 3–4) will be a hands-on workshop for pre-college teachers; the post-conference (August 7–9) will focus on Japanese as a heritage language. Complete information on the man conference, the pre-conference, and the post-conference is available online at www.japaneseteaching.org/icjle.

Partial funding for ICJLE has been generously donated by the Toshiba International Foundation; the Japan Foundation; the Shoyu Club Foundation; Toyota Motor Corporation of North America; The East Asian Languages and Cultures Department at Columbia University; the Donald Keene Center at Columbia University; the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia University; and the Japanese Pedagogy Program at Columbia University.

Classical Japanese SIG Meeting at AAS 2006

The ATJ-sponsored Classical Japanese (bungo) SIG at the 2006 Association for Asian Studies annual conference drew a large and active audience of over 40 participants. Key speakers Ed Kamens, Tim Wixted, and Haruo Shirane opened the interactive session by presenting pedagogical background on three major texts for teaching Classical Japanese.

Professor Shirane spoke about his Classical Japanese: A Grammar (Columbia UP, 2005), which focuses on presenting bungo as a living language. Designed for non-native speakers, his text assumes intermediate competence in modern Japanese and provides pronunciation guides and English translations of all passages cited. This first volume will be supplemented by a second, the Classical Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary, which is currently in test phase. Professor Wixted, also concentrating on pedagogical tools for intermediate learners, spoke about his Handbook of Classical Japanese (Cornell East Asian Series, forthcoming), which he designed primarily as a reference work to be used in conjunction with standard grammars. The work focuses on conjugatable words and contains an especially useful section on “How to Unpack Bungo Verbs.” Wixted’s handbook will also be particularly useful for its nearly exhaustive catalogue of translations into modern Japanese and into an array of European languages.

Accommodating the needs of more advanced learners, Dr. Kamens advocated combining the use of Japanese language textbooks, such as Ono Susumu’s Shinpen Bungo Bunpō (Chūō Tosho), with various on-line resources that present classical Japanese not through brief, out-of-context quotes, but rather through complete annotated editions such as may be found through the University of Virginia’s Japanese Text Initiative (http://etext.virginia.edu/japanese/texts.html).

Following these presentations, an extended discussion focused particularly on the need for (1) a clearinghouse for resource materials and (2) better articulation between modern and classical Japanese language instruction. Dr. Steven Carter suggested that next year’s SIG at the AAS in Boston actively include our colleagues in modern Japanese. To that end, we have decided to open the 2007 SIG with a panel of second language acquisition pedagogues. We are also actively working on a resources page, which will be linked to the ATJ home page.

Stephen Miller, Univ. of Mass.–Amherst
Charlotte Eubanks, Univ. of Virginia

Culture and Language SIG Meeting at AAS 2006

The first meeting of ATJ’s Culture and Language SIG, which was held on April 6 and was attended by six people, addressed the basic issues on Japanese culture and on culture in general. The topics which I covered or tried to cover as a coordinator during the two-hour discussion were: 1) crucial ingredients of the definition of culture, 2) a universal notion of culture based on biologically conditioned “cultural instinct,” 3) cultural competence—can it be assessed? If so, how? 4) “cultural discourse” with nature of Said’s Orientalism—how should we deal with it in our cultural education? 5) links between language and culture from the perspective of “cultural linguistics,” 6) reflections on how we language instructors have taught culture in classroom and how introductory Japanese textbooks have dealt with it, 7) how should we integrate the notion of culture as defined in the National Standards into our overall language instruction? I am considering organizing a panel on culture for the 2007 AAS/ATJ after we have prioritized the issues.

Seiichi Makino, Princeton Univ.

Japanese as a Heritage Language (JHL) SIG Meeting at AAS 2006

Three papers were presented at the JHL SIG session held in San Francisco on April 6. “Case study on the positioning of Japanese numeric phrases in JHL children’s narratives” by Atsuko Atagi examined the development in the use of quantifiers in narrative among two different age groups of young JHL speakers. “JHL learners’ use of ellipsis in spoken Japanese discourse” by Akiko Kuroki studied the difference in the quality and quantity of ellipsis in the speech of JHL college students in comparison with JFL students. “Cultural and ethnic diversity: Motivational beliefs and Japanese language proficiency” by Masako Nunn was a study of motivational differences among three groups of high school students: JHL students, Asian JFL students, and non-Asian JFL students.

Although the ages of the informants and the research fields were varied, the results were interesting. Atagi’s study showed qualitative and quantitative differences in the use of quantifiers between two age groups, and she found a positive correlation between the child’s literacy experiences and development in quantifier use. Her study supports the importance of reading for children’s language development. Kuroki’s study found that JFL speakers who had lived in Japan for a few years outperformed JHL speakers who have never lived in Japan in the use of ellipsis. Her study implies that an immersion experience in Japan is an important factor for overall language development even for JHL speakers. Nunn’s study found that JHL students and Asian JFL students showed similarities in the importance of parental aspiration as a motivation to learn Japanese in high school, while non-Asian students’ motivations were different from these two. Her study shows the importance of examining cultural differences or similarities in addition to the motivational variables that have previously been studied.

Masako O. Douglas, California State Univ., Long Beach

ATJ Endowment Is Growing

ATJ has joined the ranks of other non-profit organizations in establishing an endowment fund. Contributions of any amount to this fund, which are tax-deductible, will help to ensure that the Association can continue to provide services to members in the future. A contribution has recently been made to the Endowment by Duane Olson. Please consider donating when you next renew your membership, or by mail at any time. For more information, contact the ATJ office.