So starting next month I will be teaching Japanese for 6 months for my senior project! I am teaching in an online school so I have a lot of options. I allready have the basis of what I am going to teach so I was wondering if you guys would lend me some of your advice -- just as much in general teaching advice.

Basic content)
Month 1 ひらがな／カタカナ and basic vocabulary expressions

I decided a big "no" to verbs because I found it easier to learn characters with more tangible words. I have organised vocabulary words so that as you learn a character you can write two new words. The disadvantage is that the first two words are just "あ！" and "ああ". Also, there will be no ローマ字. I am working on MP3 files/youtube with Japanese friends. I never did study ローマ字, but when I went to an actual Japanese class in college I was happy I never touched it.

Month 2

This month we go over basic grammar. No kanji will be seen until next month.
This section is self explanatary except the way I introduce grammar. Most textbooks use a topic and try to fit grammar into that. Sometimes it's good but I prefered Tae Kim when I was learning. So the order is reveresed, the topics and vocabulary are centered around the grammar. Also, I plan on teaching grammar by their form. Example, ます-form すぎる are taught side by side.

Month 3

I introduce kanji in this section. (100字) I am mixing Heisig methods but in moderation. Most students don't go past 400字 so I won't be going over that mark. I will introduce another 100字 for every month after this along with grammar. This month we go over all the て form conjugation/uses.

Month 4

This month we start on (written) production. All the grammar is based on the た form. (たことがある etc.)

Month 5

This month's focus is conversation. We start casual speach and the grammar forms are based on ない forms. We also do a bit of work on adverbs.

Month 6

This month covers all areas not covered in the previous lessons. Altogethor, 3000 words, 400 漢字 (100), all elemetary and very few intermediate grammar are introduced. One of the goals I had was to establish a very strudy base for the students so that they can learn on their own ignitiative. I understand many will just want to hang out, but I happen to study in a unique school with some pretty smart students.


I want to heavily use youtube in ひらがな／カタカナ aid so I can evade romanization completely. I am also working on creating a more open-world kind of study. Since our school is online I want to find activities through real materials. Songs via youtube with lyrics etc. Even though the school is online I still have access to a classroom so it has social aspects. I created an email account for students to ask questions or for volunteers. (nihongo911@yahoo.com) Despite that I am teaching at a real school I am posting all material and lessons on a blog. (I need to work on it a bit more before I can show it. )

If you want to help me, PM me and I will give you access to the email and material.
よろしくお願いします！
(PS: Please excuse my writing I wrote this using a tablet I just recieved as a present and I haven't gotten used to it yet.)

How many times per week does your class meet? What are the goals of your course? If it's an online course, do you have any way of making sure your students will be prepared for class or even show up? I know one of my main problems with taking online classes is that people weren't prepared, clueless new people wandered in or they didn't show up to every lesson and so class wasn't able to move forward at a reasonable rate.

What is your thought process behind deciding to spend a month on vocab, a month on kanji, a month on grammar? Depending on how often you meet with your students, it might be frustrating/boring for them to spend a month just focusing on one aspect of the language. I imagine if it's just once a week, that should be fine. Some of your goals, however, seem a bit ambitious for just once a week. Do later lessons reinforce material that was previously taught?

Is it common to hold off on learning kanji for so long? I actually find it more difficult to read words in hiragana than in kanji, because it's difficult to decide where the breaks are between the words (try reading a picture book written all in hiragana). When I took my basic Japanese course in college, we learned hiragana/katakana in the first week and then moved on to simple kanji/vocabulary by reading dialogues, etc. That way by the end of the first month we could speak really simple sentences and do a really basic jikou shoukai.

This is an ambitious project and I applaud you for having the guts to tackle it. Good luck!

Thank you for your response!

We meet once a week on Thursdays. (Time is not official as of yet)

I think I states my goal on the bottom of my original post: to provide the basis of Japanese knwoledge so that students will be able to learn on their own ignititiative. I don't have a full year but with 6 months I can surely get them to that goal.

Well the class isn't used similar to that of a brick&morter school. During the first month we will mainly be doing writing (かな) and reading. And social activities. The main text is in the blog and in PDF formats. The class is the more fun stuff.

I highly doubt they will be clueless when it comes to online education. Many of us, including me, have been in an online school for 6 years. It's more a publicity problem I think.

ALL college classes I have been a part of have spent 1 month on ひらがな and 1 month on カタカナ. Even after those months we still spent a hige part of our time reviewing the かな. One month of learning characters may seem boring but I will try to make it as enterainting as I can. I thought this would allow a transitional phase for students to join. (Not everyone is going to start on the day the program starts.)

Most schools put of kanji for a very long time. A high school class may not even teach them in the first year! In college it was around 3-4 months in. I decided that after learning characters for a month they would want a break from that.

Most school teach grammar along with かな for about 3 months, right? Well it seems that teachers feel like they have to use ローマ字. Looking at my peers in later lvels they still had problems reflecting back on this. (Only understanding Japanese spoken by an English speaker, not being able to write some characters etc.) Pronunciation seems to be more natural when you don't have to go back and break bad habits, like reading in English etc. As for grammar I am taking a semi-AJATT route. We will be studying sentences in dialogs, stories, まんが etc. Grammar in the traditional sense may be introduced but at a much softer level. I know I shudder in fear when I hear the word, "grammar" so I don't think kids will want to go that route. (It's how I started and it took forever for some things to click.)

Thank you for your feedback! I wish I went to your school when I was younger.

I actually started Japanese as a sophomore in college, so technically speaking you are way ahead of where I was at your age. My first year we met for an hour every MWF and on TR we met for 90 minutes. (Second and third year it was an hour every day.) My experience is very different from yours, which may explain my confusion. Because of this, I really don't think kanji should generally be put off for so long.

I'm genuinely surprised to find out that other colleges don't teach kanji at all until 3 months in. Is this true for most colleges?

From what it sounds like, you're trying to pack a full academic year into twenty-four classes in terms of the amount of grammar, kanji and vocabulary covered. It may be possible, but it's more realistic that you're going to have to lower your expectations. Put another way, after my first 24 classes I only knew a handful of kanji, maybe 5 grammar patterns and was by no means up to reading anything outside of the short, simple sentences in my textbook.

So, your success really depends on your students. Who are they? How motivated will they be? How much homework will you assign? How will they be held accountable if they don't do their work? Will your students be expecting you to spoon feed them the material? You have to remember that they most likely will have other responsibilities/actives/classes beyond studying Japanese. Japanese may well be their last priority, especially if you're teaching for free. This is a reality I ran into when I was teaching/taking classes on edufire a couple years ago.

I would stay away from manga, unless it's been selected carefully or designed specifically for teaching purposes (Japanese in Mangaland comes to mind). Manga (and anime) tends to use non-standard Japanese--dialect, slang, masculine/feminine speech--that is difficult for beginners to understand before they have a solid grasp of the language.

Will you be able to adjust your lesson plans based on how your students are progressing? Can you give example sentences/passages of what you want your students able to read by the end of the course?

I hate to sound like I'm raining on your parade. I could be completely wrong in my assessment, as the only time I've studied on my own has been after I've achieved a working usage of Japanese.

I do think THIS goal is achievable: to provide the basis of Japanese knowledge so that students will be able to learn on their own initiative.

I wish you the best of luck, and I'm sure this will be a great learning experience for both you and your students. When do you start teaching?

I took 3 semesters of Japanese and we didn't learn any kanji until halfway through the second semester. By the end of the second semester we learned about 50, and then about 200 in the third semester. I had been going through RTK on my own at the time so the quizzes were super easy, but my classmates were having way more trouble as the kanji were being learned in a pretty random order. Most first semester college courses are directed at people who just want to know a tiny bit for traveling, so it's clear why they wouldn't bother with it until later.

Are you going to dedicate time specifically to pronunciation? As a beginner, I wish I'd had some concrete explanations for some of the sounds, and especially pitch accent. I'm still trying to undo some of the damage a lack of these caused (I'm not sure it's even possible). I think you could do it while teaching kana and introducing the basic vocabulary.

If you can give students the awareness they need from the start, they'll be able to hear their own mistakes and avoid falling into bad habits.

bluemarigolds Wrote:I'm genuinely surprised to find out that other colleges don't teach kanji at all until 3 months in. Is this true for most colleges?

Depends on the place. We start kanji in the third quarter, after about 23-24 weeks. However, the focus of the first year is on the spoken language.

Wow, what an ambitious plan! Since this is your project I'm assuming your students are doing this for fun and won't actually be receiving a real grade? If so I suggest focusing primarily on passive skills, i.e. listening and reading. If students have to worry about homework and tests for your class along with their "real" classes it's your class that's going to get neglected.

Other suggestions:

1) Only teach words in the script they are most likely to appear in native materials. For instance basic words such as 女の子、山, and、日本 are most commonly written in kanji, so students should be introduced to them in that way, not おんなのこ、やま、and にほん.

2) Teach katakana first, as most students seem to have more trouble with that than with hiragana. Also the large number of English loan words using katakana enable students to focus on reading and pronunciation without worrying about learning entirely new words.

3) Expose students to kanji as soon as possible. It's not necessary to actually teach them the kanji initially, but by using kanji w/ furigana early on it will increase their total kanji exposure.

Good luck and keep us updated on their proogress!

Thank you everyone for your help!

I will start on the first of October. I hope I can get my act togethor before then.

Homework: I'm not giving out tests or quizes like most schools but we will do activities which involve Japanese skills like, folding おりがみ or a made-up board game. These would only be for the once-per-week practice section done via online witeboard. I want the class to be both interesting but informative. The lessons are small, ideally one lessons is to be completed everyday (even Sunday and Saturday...) So I'm making the lessons bite-sized. Though, of course, many will deside that they will study on only week days which is fine.

I will definitely introduce 漢字ーふりがな for reading passeges. Thanks for the tip.
I thought ひらがな was much easier than カタカナ. ツシンソetc But either way I will be focusing on pronunciation strongly during the first month.

I say "class" because officially that it what my project is about but there is no credit or regulation so I am using this to my advantage.

My class is completely optional so many students will finish all the material and many won't -- but that won't affect their progress. By finishing the entire program a student could definitely pass the NJLPT4. (400 kanji)(1-5 intermediate grammar points)(3000 words) But this is only optimal.

Does anyone have any online material like children story books? Hopefully with audio. I think 桃太郎 would be a great story to show class.

Thank you everyone for your tips!
皆さん、よろしく御願いします。

gyuujuice Wrote:Does anyone have any online material like children story books? Hopefully with audio. I think 桃太郎 would be a great story to show class.

http://life.ou.edu/stories/ This is what I used when I started learning before I knew any kanji. I think it was a huge help, it was actually quite accessible even before JLPT4 level.

http://e-hon.jp/demo2/index1.htm

Pro: Pictures!

Con: Kanji's kinda small.

Those are immensely helpful!!!
They are the perfect material to teach with!

Thanks!