Dear Sensei

The 2002/2003 Japan Foundation Grant Programs Reminder

The application deadline for all programs is December 3, 2001 and results will be announced in April next year.

The 32nd Annual Japanese Language Speech Contest Results

The winners of the Senior A, B, Open and Background Speaker Divisions from each state and territory are listed below.

N S W
Senior A	Rebecca Ho	Taylor's College
Senior B	Alice Williams	John Paul College
Open	Seckin Cetin	University of New South Wales
A C T
Senior A	Rosa Sung-Eun Jang	CCEGGS
Senior B	Emily Wells	Radford College
Open	Yvette Kirby	University of Canberra
V I C
Senior A	Zoe McLellan	Monbulk College
Senior B	Michael McVeigh	Xavier College
Open	Jarrod Peeters	Monash University
T A S
Senior A	Andrew Gauden
S A
Senior A	Miriam Edwards	Immanuel College
Open	Mark Ainslie	Adelaide University
W A
Senior A	Noni Winata	Shenton College
Senior B	Maria Tang	Leeming Senior High School
Open	Irene Tay	Curtin University
Background Speaker	Asagi Murayama	Shenton College
N T
Junior A	Amy Wells	St Philips College
Senior A	Lucilla Lee	Darwin High School
Senior B	Cameron Cilento	St Philips College
Q L D
Senior A	Annie Lee	All Saints Anglican School
Senior B	Samantha Myers	Moreton Bay College
Open	Dora Lee	University of Queensland

The Japan Foundation Symposium on Japanese Teacher Networks 25-31 October 2001

Representatives from Japanese language teacher networks around the world were invited to participate in the Symposium, which was held at the Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute, Urawa on October 27th. Ms Jacqui Brown was selected from the JLTAV to represent Australia. Some of the participants of the symposium, including Ms Brown, also participated in a seminar at the Japan Foundation Japanese Language Institute, Kansai on 30 October. In attending the Symposium, Ms Brown was required to participate in a Japanese discussion panel and to prepare a report in Japanese on the JLTAV and Japanese language networks in Australia.

Links

No doubt a lot of teachers have been using our search link as a quick way to access great Japanese websites. Our latest sites include a lot of Japanese fast food restaurants - great for using in a lesson. The sites are colorful and easy to navigate even if you can't read all the Kanji! They always have menus (lots of katakana) with pictures and prices and usually maps too. How about comparing MacDonald's in Japan with Australia? Or giving directions from Osaka Station to the nearest KFC?

Go to the link page type in menu as a keyword and click search. Some other fun websites include Japanese Amusement Parks. They always have great maps and pictures of rides. Students can count how many rides, shops, restaurants, etc in the parks and make presentations. Use amusement park as your keywords and see what you come up with! There are also great language resource websites too. A lot of teachers ask about how they can enable their computers to display Japanese characters. There are quiet a few ways to do this - but you do need a bit of patience. Type in computer as your keyword and you will find links to various sites.

Teaching Resources available to download from the website!

You might have noticed that the two most recent resource materials produced by the Sydney Language Centre are now on the website.

You can now download Activity resources - Activities for Multi-level Classes and Integrating with the whole Curriculum Topic: Water, from our website http://www.jpf.org.au/slc/index.html. We are very excited about having made these resources available for everyone and hope to be able to bring you more in the future.

Editor's Note
I hope you have all enjoyed the November issue of Dear Sensei as much as I have enjoyed working on it. As it's my first full issue as editor, I would appreciate any feedback. I have been working here at the centre for 4 months now and am enjoying it immensely. I am sure you are looking forward to your summer holidays and I would like to wish you a safe and fun festive season! (Lynsey McGee)