INSIDE... JAPAN 2001 • TEACHING KANJI IMA AND WAKATTA REVIEWED

MADOVOLUME 9 • JANUARY 2001

THE JAPAN FOUNDATIONNIHONGO CENTRE NEWSLETTER

BBC & Nihongo Centre create new KS3 digital resources

From this month, Key Stage 3 pupils studying Japanese in the UK couldbe swapping their textbooks for PCs and taking classes online through aDfEE-funded pilot project. The new resources are being developed bythe BBC in partnership with the Nihongo Centre, after a successful bidfor DfEE funding to create a UK-specific course for Japanese, to bedelivered via Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

The pilot is designed to discover whether the availability of ICT-basedresources could have a significant impact on the take-up of Japanese

in schools and go some way towards easing the MFL teacher shortageproblem. The potential of ICT for motivating pupils, together with theflexibility it provides to teachers, will also be explored and it is hopedthat the project will lead to the creation of innovative andstimulating resources, accessible both in and outside the classroom.

Steven Fawkes, Development Officer at the BBC, sees the KS3Japanese project as providing an invaluable insight into what onlinematerials, approaches and interactivity are most appropriate to thespecific linguistic and motivational needs of language learners in thiskey age-group. Findings will be of interest to teachers of alllanguages in the context of the digital classroom of the future.

A comprehensive one year online course will be developed by a team ofpractising teachers, working with the BBC and the Nihongo Centre. Thewebsite content will be co-ordinated at the BBC by Claire Dugard,formerly of the Nihongo Centre. The target audience will be Year 7 pupils(age 11-12), starting Japanese for the first time. The pilot project willinvolve 20 schools throughout the UK and a number of independentlearners. The cohort will include 5 schools without a specialist teacher ofJapanese, where the teacher will learn alongside the class.

Mr Munehiro Waketa, Director General of The Japan Foundation inLondon, is delighted that the Nihongo Centre will be working inpartnership with the BBC on the pilot project. “Teachers in the UKhave long felt the lack of resources tailored to the needs of theirpupils, and so it is particularly exciting to have the opportunity todevelop a course specifically linked to the UK curriculum that can beaccessed through the internet. I also look forward to the availabilityof multimedia resources which will enable younger pupils to studyJapanese in an enjoyable and interactive way.”

Learn Japanese with Tobu!

PAGE 2 NIHONGO CENTRE NEWS

Lydia Morey and students being filmed at Colston Girls' School in Bristol

In the last issue of Mado, we incorrectly stated thatSalvatorian College had received language college status,whereas in fact they are still in the process of applying forit. We apologise for any confusion this may have caused.

Higher EducationSeminarOn Saturday February 10, the Nihongo Centrewill hold its first seminar for Japaneselanguage teachers in Higher Education. Thefocus of the seminar is the Study Tour aspectof degree programmes and individualpresentations will include how to preparestudents for the Study Tour in Japan, by DrCarol Hayes from the University of Durhamand the importance of communicationbetween universities in the UK and Japanwhen planning Year Abroad courses by YokoMatsumoto-Sturt from the University ofEdinburgh. Akiko Furukawa from ReadingUniversity will also talk on assessmentissues in duals honours courses. After lunch,participants will have the opportunity todiscuss their topic of choice further in groupworkshops. The seminar is open to allteachers of Japanese at HE level, although itis targeted in particular at institutionsoffering Single or Dual Honours in Japanese. For further details call Etsuko Yamada at theNihongo Centre on 020 7838 9955 or sendan email to: etsuko@nihongocentre.org.uk.

Class Acts Success Stories from the UK Japanese classroomOne of the Nihongo Centre’s major projects for Japan 2001, Class Acts willdemonstrate the range of styles and approaches being used by teachers of Japanesein the UK. The aims of the project are to produce a video of teachers in action in theclassroom to serve as both a training tool for student teachers, newly qualifiedteachers and even experienced teachers of Japanese and a showcase of best practiceto inform head teachers and other decision makers, as well as educationalorganisations and language bodies of the current UK secondary Japanese scene.

The video will be 3 hours in length, divided into a series of focus areas such as targetlanguage use, effective drilling, teaching script, using ICT, teaching through games,teaching grammar, teaching translation, differentiation etc. Each area will be exploredthrough a number of short clips backed up by teacher and pupil comment.

The Class Acts Team, led by Sally Lewis and consisting of Kitani Sensei as advisor and editorand Mineo Yamaguchi on the technical and production side, took to the road last November,working with teachers of Japanese around the country. Filming will continue until March andthe aim is to launch the video at the sixth European Symposium on Japanese LanguageEducation (organised by BATJ) at the University of Cambridge on September 8, 2001.

Teachers compare notes at the joint NihongoCentre/CILT national Conference Advancing withJapanese, held in London on October 12. Theevent explored strategies and skills for teachingJapanese at A and AS Level, drawing on currentdevelopments and best practice in the teaching ofother modern foreign languages.

Advancing with Japanese

Japan 2001 is now only a matter of monthsaway – the series of activities and events willkick off in May with a Matsuri in Hyde Park,to be followed by a number of similar festivals

in different locations throughout the UK.

Japan 2001 Special

A joint programme of the Nihongo Centre and JFET, Homestay UK offers secondary schoollearners of Japanese the opportunity to spend a weekend with a Japanese family in Britainand provides a real context within which to practise their language skills. As we reported inthe last issue of Mado, the pilot project proved extremely successful and we are currentlyrecruiting Japanese host families and students interested in participating. Homestay UK willbe launched in May and runs until February 2002. If your pupils haven’t yet applied, call JFETto request forms which should be sent back to JFET as soon as possible, since the matchingprocess has already begun. If you have any queries at all about the project or the applicationform itself, don’t hesitate to call Kazuko Sato at JFET on the number on page 3.

JAPAN 2001 SPECIAL PAGE 3

The JFET Team (l to r): Mark Smith, MichiyoMitamura, Heidi Potter, Sam Flanders & Kazuko Sato

Shinjuku teenager tucks into lunch

Japan-UK LiveA structured internet exchange project forschool-aged students in the UK and Japan,Japan-UK Live features a bilingual site with arolling programme of themes includingcurriculum-linked materials, online discussionsand ‘ask the expert’ sessions. Each of the fivethemes, which are currently being decided inconsultation with teachers, will run for aperiod of five weeks. The first will start in May2001, after an initial pilot stage. Beingbilingual, Japan-UK Live will provide a rareopportunity for students in both countries toparticipate on equal terms. It is open to allschools who have registered as participantsand can be accessed at each school’sconvenience. For further details, contact JFET.

The Way We AreA touring photographic exhibition consistingof 25 A1-size photo panels featuringportraits of 20 Japanese high school studentsas seen by their friends, The Way We Areoffers insights into the everyday lives ofJapanese teenagers and is accompanied byguidelines and support materials. It is hopedto provide an opportunity for British pupilsto respond with their own photographsthough a nationwide competition. The WayWe Are will be available to tour to schoolsfrom May. Applications for free loan areinvited for periods of two weeks from May 1to March 31, 2002. Contact JFET for furtherdetails or fill in the flyer enclosed with thisissue of Mado.

Discovering JapanAn interactive exhibition of Japanese culturein themed sections (costume, design,gardens, food, a Shinto shrine, wrapping andwriting), Discovering Japan will travel tovenues throughout the country in 2001 andcould provide a useful stimulus for classeslearning Japanese. So far, confirmedbookings have been made for New GreenhamArts (February), Brighton Festival (May),British Museum (September – October),Poole Study Gallery (October – December).To find out more, contact JFET.

Buckingham Gate, London, SW1E 6AJ; Tel:020 7630 8696 Fax: 020 7931 8453; Email: jfet@jfet.org.uk; or visit the websiteat www.jfet.org.uk.

The JFET maintains a database of peoplewanting to be kept up to date with Japan2001 education initiatives. If you would liketo receive regular updates on Japan 2001,contact JFET and ask to be added to themailing list.

Science, Creativity and the young MindThe Japan 2001 Workshop will involve 60Japanese and British young people of sixthform age, working together in small groupsin genuine science/engineering relatedprojects which challenge their ingenuity andcreativity. Student teams will be guided byspecialists in a variety of fields and theworkshop will culminate in students’ publicpresentations of their work. For furtherdetails contact Dr Eric Albone, Director,Clifton Scientific Trust at eric.albone@clifton-scientific.org or on 0117 973 8536.

Teachers’ Workshops onJapanJFET will be holding a series of one-dayJapanese studies workshops for teachersaround the country both before and duringJapan 2001, working closely with educationadvisory teams in authorities planningcountrywide education projects. Forthcomingworkshops will take place in Newbury onJanuary 20, (Music, Primary and Geography),Wincanton from 17-18 March (Primary, FoodTechnology and Art); Stafford on 23 March(Geography) and there are also plans to runa cross-curricular day in Gloucester in Apriland a similar event in Cambridge. To findout more, contact JFET.

JFET ContactsJFET is co-ordinating the core educationprogrammes for Japan 2001. Contact MarkSmith, Japan 2001 Education Co-ordinator(mark@jfet.org.uk) for details of any of theeducational projects listed above or KazukoSato, Homestay UK Co-ordinator,(hsuk@jfet.org.uk), if you would like toapply for Homestay UK. For any generalenquiries, contact JFET at Swire House, 59

If you’ve been looking for something to motivate your students, Japan 2001 could provide the perfectopportunity; it’s the biggest celebration of Japan in the UK since the Japan Festival in 1991 and notonly that but education, regionalisation and participation are at the heart of Japan 2001.

Although it’s impossible to list all the events and projects being planned we have highlighted a fewof the core education projects below. Contact the Japan Festival Education Trust (JFET) for furtherdetails of education programmes for Japan 2001 or see the official Japan 2001 website (www.japan2001.org.uk) for an events database which can be searched by date, type of event and region.

MatsuriThe Hyde Park Matsuri will take place on 19and 20 May, featuring taiko drumming, foodstalls, dancing, martial arts, music, gamesand workshops. Before and after the event inLondon, a series of Japanese festivals will beheld at venues around the UK. Below is a listof events planned so far with provisionaldates. If you are interested in linking anevent you are planning to one of the regionalmatsuri, contact Ms Masako Iso at JICC,Embassy of Japan on 020 7465 6500.

Bangor (June 9), Belfast (August 31-September 1), Birmingham (August 19),Brighton (May 27), Cambridge (June 17),Canterbury (June 22-23 and October, orFeb/March 2002), Cardiff (June 9-10),Cheltenham (September 15-16), Derby (May, June, September or October),Edinburgh (June 2-3), Exbury (July 21-22),Glasgow (June 9-10), Manchester (May 25-27), Newbury (May 13), Oxford (June 9),Peterborough (June 23-July 8), Portsmouth (August 4 -5), Reading(October), Stratford-upon-Avon (June orJuly) Washington (July 7-8), Whitehaven(Summer) and Winchester (May 5).

AimsCreating Kanji Families will help students topractise the following skills:

Identifying key components in kanji, which provides a gateway to understanding the structure of kanji

Grouping kanji by key components

Recognising the shape of kanji

Inferring the meanings of kanji from semantic components

Using a dictionary (looking up kanji by number of strokes, radicals and readings)

LevelThis concept is applicable to all levels,although the reference chart inserted focuseson the kanji required from GCSE to A Level

Ideas and Approaches forteaching Kanji throughgrouping

Example A on page 5 shows a KanjiFamily based on the radical while B isan example of kanji grouped according tothe family. These examples can becopied and used as a stimulus toencourage students to remember kanji ingroups or enlarged to create posters forthe classroom wall.

You may like to move on to creating yourown Kanji Families which could be

grouped by radical, as in the exampleson page 5, or by another key componentsuch as sound. You can even group kanjiaccording to the number of strokes if youfeel particularly creative! This activitywill help to give your students a muchclearer grasp of how kanji areconstructed.

Create a story or framework to helpstudents memorise the kanji as you drawthe basic outline of the picture and mapeach kanji onto the Kanji Family. Usefulreference books include A Guide toRemembering Japanese Characters byKenneth G Henshall and Kanji isn’t thathard! – Kanji Can be Mastered with the 24Rules by Yoshiaki Takebe. You don’t haveto finish filling in all the kanji together;students can add new characters to thefamily as they learn them.

Encourage students to think up their ownamusing stories and pictures to helpthem memorise groups of kanji. Youdon’t need to follow radicals strictlywhen grouping kanji, since sometimesstudents can create more interestingstories with the ‘wrong’ key components.Note the example on page 5, where ,which technically should belong to the

group is added to the family.

ReferenceI have created a chart which groups kanjiaccording to the 12 most common radicals,showing those which are required for GCSE,AS and A2 Level. This chart contains abouta third of the 600 kanji your students willneed to learn. If together, you can createKanji Families for those 12 basic radicals,teaching and learning kanji will be muchmore fun and much less effort!

PAGE 4 TEACHER’S PAGE

What better time to startthinking about new strategies forteaching kanji than at thebeginning of a new year! In thisissue, I have outlined some ideasand approaches for teaching kanjithrough grouping which can oftenhelp students to memorisecharacters. One activity I havefound particularly effective isKanji Families, further details ofwhich are given on the right. Usethe examples on page 5 as astarting point to create your ownKanji Families which can be madeinto posters for the classroom.

Kanji Families

KANJI FAMILIES MADO VOL 9 PAGE 5

A

B

PAGE 6 NEWS UPDATE

In 1996 Katharine LadyBerkeley’s School (KLB) in

Gloucestershire became a language collegeand moved from a three language to an eightlanguage curriculum. Five new languageswere added to the existing ones (French,German and Russian) and Japanese took itsplace alongside Spanish, Italian, Mandarinand Latin.

The position of Japanese at the school wasreinforced in 2000, when a significantredesign of the curriculum made Japaneseone of their “Big Four” languages. Thiscurriculum expansion has been underpinnedby the school’s specialist staff: two Britishqualified teachers – Sarah Makins and LizParke – and an assistant teacher from Japan,Akiko Tanaka.

Currently, there are Japanese classes in allyears except Year 13 with a total ofapproximately 210 pupils studying Japanese.In the new pattern, all pupils who enter theschool will experience Japanese in Year 7. AsSarah Makins, Head of Japanese, notes: “Thisapproach allows all pupils to make aninformed decision about whether to continue

with Japanese, and gives us the chance todebunk myths about the alleged difficulty ofthe language.”

In the Sixth Form the school offers theCertificate in Business Language Competencefor those who have not had the chance to doJapanese lower down the school in additionto AS Level. For the last two years KLB hasalso started to take Japanese into its feederprimary schools. These lessons involve somelanguage but also incorporate learning aboutJapan and Japanese culture.

KLB has established a strong link withHikawa High School in Yamanashi, whosepupils it has hosted three times. KLB pupilshave travelled to Yamanashi twice, once in1998 and again last November. The schoolhas found the link beneficial and motivatingfor everyone involved and it has given pupilsa context in which to use their Japanese. Ina wider context, the favourable impressionmade by the Japanese visitors in the schooland town has helped to further the cause ofgood Anglo-Japanese relations.

Head Teacher Andrew Harris feels theintroduction of Japanese has been

particularly successful and notes that in thecontext of an increasing range of links withcountries in the Far East, “those who have anunderstanding of the languages and culturesin that part of the world will be at theforefront of ensuring the positiverelationships between our peoples that willbe essential in the world wide connectedcommunity of the twenty first century. We arecertain that our development of Japanese inthe curriculum will do much to prepare ourpupils for this global society of the future.”

JLC provides Japanese GCSEFocus at Language WorldThis issue we hear from Helen Gilhooly, who took over from RossWarren as JLC Chair last September.

Following on from the success of last year’s Japanese strand at theALL Conference, the JLC will mark Japan 2001 with a Japaneseprogramme at Language World 2001, which takes place in Manchesterfrom 6 to 8 April. The main focus will be on the new Japanese GCSE.This is your big chance to hear the GCSE Examiner Mary GraceBrowning outlining the revised specification, while Kitani Senseipresents a session on the new integrated speaking component andLydia Morey provides ideas and activities for building your pupils’Japanese skills as they progress to GCSE. There will also bepresentations on Bridging the Language Gap through Culture by YukikoIsono, Motivate your pupils with Manga! by Naruki Enomoto andComputer as Teacher – a case study in Japanese by Claire Dugard andSteven Fawkes of the BBC. The JLC is offering a special reduced rateof £30 for one day (either Friday or Saturday) for teachers ofJapanese, so don’t miss out!

Another activity we are planning as part of Japan 2001 is a nationalJapanese Speech Contest, the finals of which will be held in Londonon December 10. Open to all non-native students of Japanesebetween the ages of 11 and 18, the competition will be divided intothree categories: Years 7-9 (ages 11-14); Years 10-13 (ages 14-18)pre-GCSE; and Years 11-13 (ages 16-18) post-GCSE. Entrants will beasked to send a taped speech initially and finalists for each categorywill be invited to attend the contest. The JLC is currently seekingsponsorship for the event so that substantial prizes can be offered.

Finally, the JLC is supporting and contributing to the BATJ conferencenext September by organising a secondary school strand on theSaturday, to include an invited speaker from Australia and a casestudy of a language college teaching Japanese.

For further details about JLC, contact Helen Gilhooly, Chair, JLC, Fax: 01773 531969.

Katharine Lady Berkeley’s School

BATJ UpdateAs part of its on-goingprogramme of events designedto cater for the needs ofteachers of Japanese in highereducation, BATJ organised aseminar last November atwhich Professor Kawamura,currently visiting the Universityof Vienna, gave a presentation onUsing the Internet for TeachingReading Skills. The Association also heldits first in-service training week at theUniversity of Durham in September, at which teachers shared ideasand experience. The event proved extremely successful, and it ishoped to repeat it regularly.

The first few months of 2001 will see a rush of activity with aworkshop on Teaching Writing at the University of Durham on January20 and a Computer Workshop at the University of Edinburgh onFebruary 24. In March, a talk by Professor Shimizu of Nihon JoshiDaigaku on the History of the Japanese Language is planned and wewill also be holding seminars on Japanese for Busy People inManchester on March 22 and in London on March 24.

After the success of our 3rd Annual BATJ conference in Birminghamlast September, we are currently planning a Symposium on JapaneseLanguage Education to be held in Cambridge from September 7 to 9.The event is being organised in conjunction with the Association ofJapanese Language Teachers in Europe and the Japanese LanguageCommittee of the Association for Learning Languages (ALL). All BATJevents are open to non-members, so we hope to see as many of youas possible there.

For further information about BATJ please contact Kazumi Tanaka at:Department of East Asia, SOAS, University of London, ThornhaughStreet, London WC1H 0XG. Fax: 020 7898 4233; E-mail: kt2@soas.ac.uk, or visit the BATJ website at:www.essex.ac.uk/centres/japan/batj/.

KLB students enjoying the Sayonara Party atHikawa High School

LIBRARY & RESOURCES PAGE 7

Sue Burham, CIS Heinemann

Review by Victoria Folkard, Teacher ofJapanese and Chinese, Tavistock College

(Currently available for review: textbook andworkbook from level 1.)

At Tavistock College we tend to use Kimono1 for KS3 and Kimono 2 for KS4 for theJapanese programme. Our Year 7 groups aremixed ability with subsequent years beingset. Class size is usually around thirty pupilsper class, with up to fourteen classes peryear group, averaging two teaching hoursper year group per week. It is in this contextthat I am comparing Ima! with our currentkey textbook Kimono.

Kimono 1 and Ima! have many similarities:the introduction of hiragana without the useof romaji; the use of comic strips; and asimilar range of grammar points and coretopics including basic personal information,school life, free time, travel and transport.In fact, the author of Ima! was a consultantand co-author for the Kimono series.

Each of the seven chapters of the Ima!textbook is divided into ten sectionsincluding photo stories and comic strips;opportunities for pairwork and group spokenactivities; reading practice and a referencesection for grammar, vocabulary and kanjiwriting. Each chapter also includes realiasuch as posters and signs which in additionto reinforcing language points also enhanceawareness of traditional and popular culture.

Picture stories set the scene and chaptersare based on the activities of the Asanofamily, covering the four basic skill areaswell. The textbook encourages listening andspeaking skills with some reading,complemented by extra listening activitiesand reading and writing exercises in theworkbook. Ima! 1 delivers an introduction tohiragana, limited katakana andapproximately 40 kanji. However, the amountof grammar and vocabulary covered in eachchapter is quite advanced for an ab initiocourse and it would take a keen pace tocomplete Ima! before the end of KS3.

Like the Kimono series, Ima! assumes aknowledge of hiragana before starting themain body of the textbook. Whereas withKimono, the class teacher has the option ofintroducing hiragana steadily whilst workingthrough chapter one, this may not be anoption with Ima! where students are requiredto understand hiragana fully before chapter

one. Class dynamics and teaching stylewould determine this as an advantage ordisadvantage.

A brief summary of the strengths andweaknesses of Ima!:

Strong points

a full colour text with lots of realia-based exercises

covers main National Curriculum topicareas in depth

makes full use of hiragana, katakana(annotated with furigana) and kanji fromthe start

lots of text to spur on and challengehigh ability students

priced cheaper than Kimono (Kimono 1textbook = £12.99; workbook £8.75;Ima! 1 textbook = £10.99; workbook£5.50. Prices: Japan Centre Bookshop)

Weak points

requires full working knowledge ofhiragana before starting chapter one,although the preface does contain anextensive introduction to hiragana

when hiragana is introduced, it is byindividual words, not in the gyo formation

lots of text even in chapter one; not souseful for a mixed ability ab initio class

introduces complex concepts very early on;for example family relationships and theirvarious nomenclature; counters; mixingplain and –masu forms; little reinforcementor consolidation of complex issues.

Could it replace the Kimono series? It woulddepend on your average teaching class.Finances permitting, I would certainly havea few copies of Ima! in my mixed abilityYear 7 classroom asa supplementaryvolume toKimono.Furthermore it isa superb seriesfor challenginghigher abilitystudents andcould be apossible maintextbook forthe uppersets in Years8 and 9.

WAKATTA! David Jaffray & Masumi SorrellPascal Press

Review by Yoshiko Ohta, Teacher of Japanese at WellingtonCollege

Wakatta! was published inAustralia in 1999 and is designedfor senior secondary level, whichis the equivalent of A Level inthe UK. It consists of a coursebook, two workbooks and sevenaudiotapes. The listening

material was not available for thepurposes of this review. I have consideredthis text book from the point of view of howsuitable it would be for teaching UK-basedstudents preparing for AS and A2 level.

The course book is clearly presented andconsists of twelve topic-based units, eachcontaining a vocabulary section, kanjisection, reading texts, language section,extended vocabulary section and NaruhodoCorner, which explains tricky Japanese wordsand expressions in English. The bookintroduces around 1600 words andexpressions, with new vocabulary and kanjiprovided before the reading text in each unit,and a wider range of expressions introducedafterwards. Now that AS and A2 take a topic-based approach, this book will prove useful,in particular for AS Level, as seven of thenine language-based AS topics are covered.

Wakatta! is particularly good for teachinggrammar and structures. The language sectionprovides very clear explanations of grammarand syntax, with a range of examplesentences, complete with English translations.

The course book contains a wide variety ofreading texts including a good proportion ofshorter passages such as diary entries andletters, which provide useful models forwriting as well as good practice for reading.There are also essays, reports and speecheswritten in a style which seems particularlyappropriate for the AS and A2. Englishtranslations are not provided, however, andsince Wakatta! is designed for Australianstudents it is inevitable that some of thevocabulary and cultural references will notbe relevant to British pupils.

Wakatta! is good for practising translation atA Level since the text starts with shortsentences and builds up to medium lengthpassages. Each unit of the course book has25 to 30 pages of corresponding activities inthe workbook including reading, writing andkanji practice, puzzles and exercises. Thesection on ‘Reading and Responding’provides an effective exercise for continuouswriting at AS level.

The major drawback of Wakatta! however isthat since it is designed for the Australiansyllabus, it introduces only 175 kanji – farfewer than the 600 which UK-based studentsneed to learn for A2 Level. Therefore, whileWakatta! could be a very useful referencetool for both teachers and students, it maynot answer all your AS and A2 Level needs,and supplementary material would have tobe used, in particular to cover the requirednumber of kanji.

This term we have invited two guest reviewersto take a look at some recent textbooks fromAustralia. We are very grateful to Victoria Folkardand Yoshiko Ohta for taking the time to carry outthe reviews, and we hope you find theircomments useful. Both texts are available in theLibrary if you would like to take a look foryourselves. Don’t forget that we can send youresources free of charge through our Loan ByPost service. For general library enquiries,contact the Librarian, Françoise Simmons on020 7836 9955 or send an email to

francoise@nihongocentre.org.uk.

IMA!

PAGE 8 EVENTS & NOTICEBOARD

THE NIHONGO CENTRE NEWSLETTEREditor: Caroline Lewis Design: François Hall

Published byTHE JAPAN FOUNDATION

LONDON LANGUAGE CENTRE27 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LY

Telephone: 020 7838 9955 Fax: 020 7838 9966Website: www.nihongocentre.org.uk

HEAD STARTWednesday 24 – Friday 26 JanuaryAn intensive introduction to Japanese

and the issues associated with teachingit for Heads of Modern Foreign

Languages and senior managers insecondary schools.

HIGHER EDUCATION SEMINARSaturday 10 February

A one-day seminar focusing on theStudy Tour (Year Abroad) for teachers of

Japanese in Higher Education.

JAPANESE SIXTH FORM WEEKENDFor 2001, the annual residential

immersion course for sixth formers isbeing extended to include other age

groups. Dates are as follows:16 -18 March Sixth Form Weekend

18 - 20 March Year 7-9 Residential Course20 - 22 March Year 10 and 11

For further details, contact Lydia Moreyon 029 20493997.

JAPANESE GCSE FOCUS ATLANGUAGE WORLD 2001

6-8 April JLC will run a special programme

focusing on the new Japanese GCSE forthis year’s Language World Conference atthe University of Manchester (see page6). For further information or to book a

place call ALL on 01788 546443.

JAPANESE WEEKEND AT THEBRASSHOUSE CENTRE

28-29 AprilAn opportunity for students of all ages

to immerse themselves in Japanese. For further information call the

Brasshouse Centre on 0121 303 0114.

SUMMER REFRESHER COURSEMonday 16 – Friday 20 July

The Nihongo Centre’s annual intensiveimmersion course for non-nativeteachers of Japanese. All levels.

We regret that the Nihongo Centrecourse ‘The New GCSE’ scheduled for

Thursday February 8 has beencancelled because of the special focus

on the Japanese GCSE at LanguageWorld listed above.

Welcome to the New Yearissue of Mado and thestart of whatpromises to be abig year forJapan in the UK.As you can seefrom our cover story, the Nihongo Centre isdelighted to be working with the BBC on aground-breaking DfEE-funded pilot to developUK-specific web-based resources for KS3Japanese and we will keep you updated onfuture developments. Our special focus forthis issue is Japan 2001 - we hope that someof the projects outlined on pages 2 and 3will inspire you to make the most of thisexciting opportunity to raise the profile ofJapan. For this issue’s Teacher’s Pages, KitaniSensei shows you how to approach teachingkanji by grouping them into Kanji Families,while the Library and Resources page focuseson two recent text books from Australia.Many thanks to our guest reviewers and toKatharine Lady Berkeley’s School, featured inAt the Chalkface. Events this term includeHead Start for heads of MFLs and our firstHigher Education Seminar on February 10.Don’t forget to put Language World 2001 inyour diary – the JLC has organised an in-depth look at the new Japanese GCSE. Wehope you enjoy this issue of Mado and lookforward to your feedback.

Japanese Speech Contest at Eton

This speech competition, the finals of which

will be held at Eton College,Windsor on

Sunday March 4, is open to 15-18 year old

students whose native language is not

Japanese and who have not lived in Japan for

more than 3 months. Candidates will be judged

on a five-minute speech in Japanese on a

topic of their choice, followed by a two-

minute interview. The winner will receive an

invitation to the JSA International

Competition Language Study & Cultural

Experience Programme in Japan. Students

interested in participating should send a taped

speech in Japanese with a short letter of

recommendation from their Japanese teacher

to the address below by January 19.

For further details, contact the JSA Committee

Office, 1F Lawford House, Albert Place,

Finchley, London N3 1QA. Tel: 07785 520 110

or visit the website (Japanese only) at

www.iware.ne.jp/jsa/.

Dear Editor

I would like to let Mado readers know aboutThe Japan Society’s Japanese ConversationGroup, the only monthly event in London toinsist on Japanese as the common language.Meetings take place on the first Thursday ofevery month from 6.30pm onwards andcombine lots of lively conversation with a fullprogramme of fun events. Guests don’t needto be members of The Japan Society, butyour language level should be intermediate orabove to really enjoy the evening. We tend toget a good balance of nationalities and thepub usually heaves with 50 to 60 people! Ifyou would like to come and meet the crowd,we look forward to seeing you at The Mason’sArms, 38 Maddox Street, W1 (nearest tubesare Bond Street and Oxford Circus). Madeleine Neave, c/o The Japan SocietySecretariat (tel: 020 7636 3029; email:info@japansociety.org.uk)