日本語教育の現状と展望
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概要
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Language education for foreigners has been diversified especially after the "100,000 foreign students plan" and the introduction of the "permanent resident visa" which resulted in a new influx of foreigners, many bringing their own families. This new diversity among foreign learners has required teachers to broaden the scope of their instruction to accommodate this range of abilities. Moreover, as foreigners interact not only with teachers and professionals but also with other members of the community, it is important that these community members be able to communicate in a fashion comprehensible to foreigners. With the aforementioned changes among foreign learners, it becomes necessary to reevaluate our conceptions of international communication. We have long placed the onus on foreigners to establish understandable communications, feeling excused by our status as native speakers, and have not felt required to study our own language for the sake of foreigners. We must recognize that simply being a native speaker does not mean having rights to monopolize the language, and that if we are truly interested in international understanding, we should learn not only foreign languages but our own as well. Isn't "foreigner talk", with a slower rate of speech, higher pitch, more varied intonation, shorter and simpler sentence patterns, frequent repetition and paraphrase enough to communicate? I'm afraid not. While native speakers may think that their use of "foreigner talk" or "caretaker speech" is beneficial to foreign learners, their concepts of "simplified" language can still prove difficult for foreigners. Native speakers are often unaware of the parts of their language that are difficult for foreign learners. For example, very few Japanese realize that the te-form of a verb is more complicated than the masu-form, making the short form harder to learn for foreigners than the long form. When native Japanese are unaware of these facts, it is highly optimistic to expect them to speak understandably to foreigners. Increasing numbers of Japanese universities have Japanese communication classes for their Japanese students. Although these students had studied Japanese from elementary school through high school, the emphasis in these classes was placed primarily on literacy. However, these university level conversation classes are aimed at communication between Japanese people, teaching polite speech, public speaking and the like, and little emphasis is given to communication with foreigners. These classes, if tailored properly, could provide a space to learn Japanese in such a way to improve conversation with both Japanese and non-Japanese people. By learning how to better communicate with people in other countries, we thus have a greater ability to express our opinions, share our cultural knowledge, and enhance our understanding of each other. Just as we learned English to gain an understanding of things abroad, we must now learn Japanese in a way that allows us to properly express ourselves to foreigners. Over the course of this report, I will examine the current state of Japanese teaching and learning, and provide recommendations for the improvement of Japanese language instruction. We must play a more active role in facilitating an international framework of education, to better accommodate foreign learners of Japanese. Better understanding can only have beneficial consequences, not just for the foreigners, but for ourselves as well.