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The Japan
Foundation Japanese-Language Institute, Urawa, conducted their 14th
symposium, on the theme of Primary Japanese Language Education.
Suzanne Phillips, manager of the Capricornia LOTE Immersion Program
at Crescent Lagoon State School in Rockhampton, was one of five
people from around the world to present at the symposium. Here is
her report:
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| Julia
introduced primary Japanese-language education to Hungary in 1988
and her program progressed to Junior and Senior high schools in the
90s. In 2000, a tertiary level program was implemented. Margaret
coordinates a Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program at Clarendon Elementary
School, whose community includes some background speakers with prior
target language and background experience, those with some prior target
language cultural background but no target language experience, as
well as those with no prior target language or cultural experience.
Zeng Liyun is a Japanese-language educator with the
Liaoning Province Board of Education, who has recently completed a
series of textbooks written specifically for young learners of Japanese
in that country. Noriko is a lady with a long history
of providing Japanese-language education in Japan and overseas at
all levels of the education process and is presently involved in a
project to develop a framework for teaching Japanese as a Second Language
for the Japan Council of International Schools. My own presentation
centred on my experiences as program manager for the Capricornia
LOTE Immersion Program (C.L.I.P.), an intersystematic Japanese
primary immersion program, which was established on the Crescent Lagoon
State School campus in Rockhampton, Queensland in 1995. There was significant interest in the symposium from a wide range of Japanese-language educators of broad experience in both Japan and overseas, and the hall was full. Media coverage from the Daily Yomiuri ensured a broader dissemination of information, but I felt it was a shame that such news does not make the daily Japanese-language press. This is a situation not confined to Japan. I often find that the achievements of the CLIP program are better known overseas than in Australia. I have heard people overseas refer to the “CLIP” model of immersion and have anecdotal evidence that other programs have based their frameworks on our experience. In Rockhampton, the program is known in the local Japanese teacher network and receives considerable support from the District Office. However, on occasions in a broader competitive setting, CLIP students face discrimination and penalty because of their language learning circumstances. I am of the opinion that we can all rejoice in the achievements and tenacity of those teachers who laid the foundations of Japanese-language school education in Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. I see the recent restructuring of the delivery of LOTE in primary schools in Queensland as a temporary glitch in an overall picture of dedication and success. The symposium provided me with an opportunity to revisit memories from those early times, as I heard details of the programs established in Hungary and China. There was a feeling of 1980s déjà-vu when I heard Zeng Liyun bemoan the lack of Japanese-language texts aimed at school age learners, and report on the improvement in students’ achievement when a communicative approach and a focus on “fun” replaced previous classroom practices. Both Zeng Liyun and Julia saw the delivery of Japanese-language education as a means to cultivate mutual understanding and broaden their students’ perception of the world. However, looking at where Japanese-language education is at now in Queensland, it was with Margaret that I felt the most affinity. At Clarendon Elementary School, the focus is predominantly on oral proficiency, and evaluation methods are set by outside organisations. With the implementation of school-based assessment in Queensland schools, the goal of the Japanese-language curriculum stated in the syllabus was “communication”. At primary school level, this was translated into a move towards a more oral skill-based approach than was used previously. Immersion language education relies on the early development of listening as well as speaking skills, and at CLIP, we use the Australian Language Certificate Examinations run by ACER to monitor the development of our students’ Comprehension Skills. Margaret’s biggest challenge is to set up an integrated and sequential curriculum through to secondary level. At present, her students experience a restart at Junior High and again at the beginning of Senior High School, regardless of the level of their Japanese-language development. When I spoke to the symposium of the new outcomes-based P-10 Japanese Syllabus, recently implemented in Education Queensland schools, it was with the hope that such “restart” situations would be a thing of the past in an even brighter future of LOTE education in Queensland schools. At CLIP, from 2002, a continuing secondary immersion program was set in place at both Rockhampton High School (Education Queensland) and The Cathedral College (Catholic Education) and dialogue exists to develop a smooth transition from a curriculum-focussed immersion delivery to the language-focussed delivery of the high school programs. Talks are in progress with Central Queensland University (CQU) and it is anticipated the CQU will provide language instruction for next year’s Year 12 immersion students, CLIP’s original cohort. When CLIP was established, its aim was to produce bilingual and bicultural speakers of Japanese by the end of their tertiary education. Considering the time they are exposed to the language as compared to LOTE students, this would seem an appropriate expectation. CLIP is producing students who achieve significantly better at an earlier age than those in the main LOTE stream. However, it is not the measure of success of this program, rather it should be a measure of what they can do with what they have learned, i.e. how they can use the language acquired to meet their communication needs. It is at this point that CLIP and an outcomes-based LOTE syllabus come together, I think. I have recently read chat from high school LOTE teachers on the LOTE Networks asking for help from their colleagues regarding how to develop this ability in their students, who despite a broad knowledge of vocabulary and functions, just cannot seem to be able to put it all together for communication. At CLIP, students cannot gain the knowledge they need if they do not communicate. It is as simple as that - there is a vital need to know and to communicate that knowledge. I think the new Queensland Japanese syllabus encourages us as LOTE teachers to create situations not just for LOTE learning, but also for learning in general. I try very hard not to ask questions in my own LOTE classes for which I already know the answers, in order to promote a “real” communicative setting as I have observed in CLIP.  CLIP
students do not regard their study of Japanese as something exotic
- they take speaking the Japanese language as a matter of course.
They are used to using what they know to overcome communication difficulties
and make themselves understood, and the resultant development of self-confidence
and self-esteem flows on to all aspects of their learning. |
