The Japanese Language Program of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies: Reforms and Remaining Problems
— From the Viewpoint of Improving Students’ Ability in Japanese for Academic Purposes —
FUJIMORI Hiroko SUZUKI Tomomi SUZUKI Mika NAKAMURA Akira, HANAZONO Satoru FUJIMURA Tomoko YANAGISAWA Emi
As in Suzuki, Nakamura and Fujimori (2010), we define AJ Ability as an ability that integrates (1) knowledge of language elements and skills, and (2) university-level problem-solving abilities, critical thinking, contrastive and comparative analyses, etc., and report our approaches to the “Intensive” and “Integrated” Japanese classes in the Japanese Language Program of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (JLPTUFS) in which we aim at developing students’ AJ Ability.
Next, we examine (1) how satisfied students are with the JLPTUFS classes, and (2) which skills students think improved in classes, based on the results of the term-end questionnaire, and use the data to evaluate the JLPTUFS.
We find that students in the elementary levels are most satisfied, and that students in the advanced levels are highly satisfied with specific items (e.g., “I can understand the teacher’s explanations”). Students in the intermediate levels are the least satisfied. As for their degree of improvement, they feel that their receptive ability improved comparatively well. Concerning their productive ability, it may be difficult to know its degree of improvement by self-inspection. Given more appropriate and specific descriptive statements, they may be able to evaluate their productive ability more easily. However, we merely see tendencies in this research, which does not clearly indicate correlations among factors. Further researches are, therefore, necessary.
Because JLPTUFS classes are open to students in widely diverse categories, the classes are given with a view to improving AJ Ability. Because of the student diversity, there are many problems. Educational research is required to clarify how and to what extent we may be able to cope with the diversity. To improve the JLPTUFS, we would like to continue to listen to students’ evaluations.