Election of New President and Board Members

Mari Noda, of The Ohio State University, has been elected as the next President of ATJ. She will serve one year as President-Elect (2007-2008), one year as President (2008-2009), and one year as Past President (2009-2010). Three new Board members were elected to serve from 2007 to 2010: Dan P. Dewey (University of Pittsburgh), Noriko Iwasaki (University of California at Davis), and Mayumi Oka (University of Michigan).

2007 ATJ Seminar Report

The March 22, 2007, ATJ Seminar in Boston was attended by more than 200 members and observers. Concurrent sessions throughout the day featured presentations and panels on literature, language pedagogy, second language acquisition, and linguistics. Of particular interest to graduate students and younger faculty members were two sessions, sponsored by the Professional Development SIG, on job searches and getting one's work published. A keynote speech by Hosea Hirata of Tufts University attracted a capacity audience. Professor Hirata's keynote speech, as well as texts or PowerPoint files from the job search panel session, will be posted on the ATJ website. Abstracts of all the Seminar presentations, and the email addresses of all presenters, are also archived and viewable online at www.japaneseteaching.org/ATJseminar/2007/. All of ATJ's Special Interest Groups held meetings or sessions during the Seminar. For reports on these events, see the SIG reports beginning below.

Classical Japanese SIG Report

The Bungo Special Interest Group had its first meeting in 2001 in Chicago. Our initial meeting was exploratory to find out if there was enough interest to form such a group. We've met approximately four times since then. Some of our meetings were forums with several participants, while others were talks by an invited guest speaker. At the most recent meeting in Boston, Professors Charles Quinn of Ohio State University, Patricia Wetzel of Portland State University, and Yasuko Ito Watt of Indiana University discussed how we can better integrate aspects of classical Japanese language into the modern Japanese curriculum. At the most recent meeting, we also distributed a survey to the attendees seeking more information about those who attend the Bungo Special Interest Group meetings and how we might proceed in the future. This survey can be found online at the ATJ website; everyone is welcome to fill it out and send it to the SIG chair by email.

One of the most exciting developments in the pedagogy of classical Japanese language is the recent publication of three new texts. Professor Haruo Shirane has authored a grammar and a reader/dictionary, both of which have been published by Columbia University Press. Professor Tim Wixted has published a handbook of classical Japanese grammar that has been published in the Cornell East Asia Series. The websites for these publications are:

www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023113/0231135246.HTM

www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023113/023113990X.HTM

www.einaudi.cornell.edu/eastasia/publications/item.asp?id=1130

If you are interested in the activities of the Bungo Special Interest Group or would like copies of publications that have resulted from earlier meetings of the SIG, including the transcript of a roundtable session on teaching classical Japanese and a talk by Professor Stephen Carter, please contact chair Stephen Miller: smiller@asianlan.umass.edu.

Community College SIG Report

ATJ's Community College SIG was established a few years ago in San Diego when quite a few community college teachers could attend the ATJ seminar. It is not too easy for community college teachers to attend the ATJ seminar as well as many professional opportunities due to the limited budgets of most teachers, who are most likely to be part-time instructors.

In order to draw more attention to ATJ and its activities in the field, the SIG wants to include K-12 teachers of Japanese. ATJ is planning to establish a Collegiate Japanese National Honor Society (the official title has not been determined), and community college students can certainly seek membership in this National Honor Society in the near future.

This first year of the AP Japanese Language and Culture test will necessitate more close communication among K-12 teachers, community college teachers, and four-year university teachers. We would like to ask you all to join this SIG (Community College/K-12 SIG) to work together and to discuss various common issues. Please contact SIG chair Shingo Satsutani at satsutan@cod.edu to join us and make suggestions for the future.

Japanese as a Heritage Language SIG Report

In 2006 the JHL SIG was very active in the following areas:

1. JHL SIG session at AAS, San Francisco April, 2006. The JHL SIG held a paper presentation session at the AAS conference. Since the International Conference on Japanese Language Education was held in the summer, there was no ATJ Seminar in conjunction with the AAS. However, the JHL SIG held a special session at which graduate students could present their research. The papers were blind reviewed, and the following papers were selected:

Atagi, Atsuko. "Case study on the positioning of Japanese numeric phrases in JHL children's narratives."

Kuroki, Akiko. "JHL learners' use of ellipsis in spoken Japanese discourse."

Nunn, Masako. "Cultural and ethnic diversity: Motivational beliefs and Japanese language proficiency."

The JHL SIG would like to encourage graduate students' research and to continue to support them.

2. JHL Panel at ICJLE, New York. August 2006. The JHL SIG held an invited panel session at the International Conference on Japanese Language Education:「二言語育成とL1/L2双方向の転移ー継承語教育・海外帰国子女教育・外国人児童生徒教育から得た知見」(Development of two languages and two-way transfer between L1 and L2: implications from heritage language education, education of returnees from abroad, and young learners of Japanese as a second language in Japan). Chair: Nakajima Kazuko. Panelists: Nakajima Kazuko; Ikuta Yuko; Oketani Hitomi. In addition to the invited panel, members of the JHL SIG presented their papers at the conference.

3. JHL Journal. The first issue of JHL's online journal was published in December 2006.

4. AP Japanese exam workshop. The JHL SIG organized two workshops on the AP Japanese exam for teachers and parents at hoshuukō in Southern California. The presenters were Drs. Hiroko Kataoka and Yasuhiko Tohsaku. With funding from a Japan Foundation mini-grant, we were able to offer the workshop only at two sites in Southern California. However, the response from teachers and parents was very positive, and the workshop was their only source for information about the AP Japanese exam, so we continue seeking funding to offer this type of workshop in other regions.

5. Assistance offered to French Heritage Language Program for Webmap. Mr. David Lasserre, coordinator of the French Heritage Language Program, contacted Masako Douglas, coordinator of the JHL SIG, regarding a Webmap of Japanese heritage schools and hoshūkō in the U.S. He saw the map, linked to the Heritage Language site of the UCLA Center for World Languages, and wanted to know how to conduct research to develop an online interactive map. Masako Douglas provided necessary information.

For more information, contact SIG chair Masako O. Douglas: masakoucla@earthlink.net.

Language and Culture SIG Report

On March 23 the Language and Culture SIG met in conjunction with the AAS conference and the ATJ Seminar in Boston. The eight attendees discussed the following papers in detail for almost three hours: Ichiro Noguchi (University of Wisconsin at Madison), "Nihongo kyōkasho ni arawareta bunka no setsumei no mondaiten ni tsuite," Masako Dorrill (Dillard University), "A re-examination of culture at the discourse level," and Akiko Murata (University of Pennsylvania), "Bunka-jinruigaku-teki shiten kara mita anime fan no jiko-kyōiku to nihongo-kyōiku no setten: "Bunka nōto" to fan club no kenshūkai no bunseki kara." We will announce our plan for a SIG meeting in 2008 some time in the fall of this year, so please look for an announcement in the ATJ Newsletter or contact SIG chair Seiichi Makino: smakino@princeton.edu.

Professional Development SIG Report

The Professional Development SIG, the oldest of ATJ's Special Interest Groups, focuses on various aspects of professional development for Japanese language teachers. Our past activities include a National Conference on Teaching Credentials for K-12 Japanese language teachers, a mini-conference on TA training, information sessions on such issues as NBPTS, NCATE, NCLB, and technology literacy at AAS and ACTFL conferences, SIG-sponsored sessions at ATJ Seminars, and a survey on technology literacy of Japanese language teachers. Our SIG published a special issue on professional development for Japanese language teachers in the United States in 1999 (edited by Susan Schmidt and Yashy Tohsaku), which was later translated into Japanese and published by Nihongo Kyoiku Gakkai.

At the ATJ Seminar in March 2007, the SIG sponsored two sessions, one on academic publishing and the other on job searches. We also sponsored an information session on AP Japanese Language and Culture Credit Policy during our business meeting.

Thanks to a mini-grant from the Japan Foundation, we organized a workshop on AP Japanese Language and Culture for college and university faculty members in Los Angeles in March 2007. It was very well received by the participants, and we hope to offer this workshop at several places in the future.

We are planning to have a business meeting at the ACTFL conference in San Antonio, Texas, this fall. Our SIG exchanges information and ideas via our listserv. We will send you a notice of the San Antonio meeting via the listserv early this fall.

If you are interested in joining our SIG or have any suggestions on activities, please feel free to send email to the SIG Chair, Yashy Tohsaku: ytohsaku@ucsd.edu.

ATJ Membership Renewal

You should by now have received a membership renewal letter and form. Remember that you can now renew online: www.aatj.org/membership.html. Please consider taking out a 5- or 10-year membership this time: it saves money and means that you will not have to remember to renew next year. It also sends the message that you support your profession!

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. Contributions have recently been made to the Endowment by Kimiko Abramoff, Yukie Aida, Janet Fair, Jiro Harasaki, Mutsuko Endo Hudson, Judith Rabinovitch, Robert Russell, and Yasuko Ito Watt. Please consider donating when you next renew your membership, or by mail at any time. For more information, contact the ATJ office.