1 Japanese for Young Learners 6 week teacher CPL workshopYoko Matsumoto-Sturt Japanese Studies, University of Edinburgh
2 Workshop-1 Spoken JapaneseJapanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
3 Fact checks Who speaks Japanese? How many Japanese Learners worldwide?What is it like to study Japanese (testimonial)? Influence of popular culture contents Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
4 Who speaks Japanese? Japanese is spoken by around 125 million people in Japan, with another 2 million people around the world using it as their first language Data Source – MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) report (2006) 央教育審議会初等中等教育分科会 教育課程部会 外国語専門部会（第13回）議事録・配付資料【基礎データ】」文部科学省（2006） Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
5 Japanese Learners worldwide4 million people - are studying Japanese around the world, according to a survey done by the Japan Foundation in 2013. Want to read a testimonial ? ‘What's it like to study... Japanese’ (THE INDEPENDENT17/10/2012) Date source –Survey Report on Japanese-Language Education Abroad 2015 "Survey of Overseas Japanese-Language Educational Organizations" conducted by the Japan Foundation 3990,000 in 2012. Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
6 Around 60% of the anime shown worldwide are made in Japan.(‘Japan Animation Industry Trends’, JETRO) Japanese creative industry produces a lot of consumer media Data source: ‘Japan Animation Industry Trends’, JETRO Japan Economic Monthly, June 2005 https://www.jetro.go.jp/ext_images/en/reports/market/pdf/2005_35_r.pdf Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
7 Contents and target marketTV shows, Films, Books, and comics (manga) Music (J-pop), Animation, and Video games Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
8 Consumer media and spoken languageThe language is largely contemporary, Close to the way people are speaking in Japan right now. Crossing borders (i.e. physical distance) takes only one second/click Easy access to 100% authentic study material for free Youtube/Daily Motions/ flickr Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
9 Consumer media and Impact on Japanese language teachingStrong motivational factors for leaners Education sector takes this trend seriously e.g. e-learning (self-study) using manga and anime - go to the Japanese Foundation webpage https://minato-jf.jp/ Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
10 Consumer media and Impact on Japanese language teachingNatural language acquisition Frequent users naturally develop very fluent authentic pronunciation Many fans (young people) want to read and understand without waiting for official translations Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
11 Consumer media and Impact on Japanese language teachingNatural language acquisition Users are exposed to authentic Japanese without noticing e.g. What does Genji, a hero character in Overwatch say? Though I sacrifice my body, I will never give up my honour - a classic quote from a samurai warrior, Miyamoto Musash ( ) - ”mi wo sutete mo myouri wa sutezu” 身 を 捨てて も 名利 は 捨てず Overwatch is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Picture of Miyamoto Musashi by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳 ): he was one of the great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e (浮世絵) style of woodblock prints and painting Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
12 Five myths about Japanese languageTrue or False? Japanese is related to no other language Japanese is really hard to learn Japanese people speak very politely (honorific language) Japanese women speak submissively (gender-based speech) Japanese writing is difficult Counter articles can be found here: “Why People Say Japanese Is Hard to Learn and Why They're Wrong” by famous leaner blog Tofugu https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/is-japanese-hard-to-learn/ “Is Japanese hard? Why Japanese is easier than you think” by John Fotheringham https://www.fluentin3months.com/easy-japanese/# Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
13 Five myths about Japanese languageEnglish and Japanese Anything in common? Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
14 English and Japanese Just like in English, Japanese words have no grammatical gender (no “masculine”, “feminine” or “neuter” nouns), but Japanese has gender-based speech style as an option (personal choice) men and women can choose to speak differently, if they wish Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
15 Five myths about Japanese languageItalian and Japanese Anything in common? Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
16 Two languages are completely unrelated, butJapanese and Italian have very similar phonetic structure. I papa vs. pappa J パパ papa ｖｓ. パッパ pappa Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
17 Japanese language overviewJapanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
18 Japanese language: the origin“ Japanese is a language-isolate in that its genetic affiliation to other languages or language families has not been entirely clarified.” (Shibatani, 1990) Are there any languages that are similar to Japanese? some believe it is morphologically close to Altaic languages like Turkish (the Altaic hypothesis) – both Japanese and Turkish are classified as a agglutinative languages, its syntactic similarity to Korean is widely known – J-K languages are typical SOV (subject-object-verb) languages, it’s writing system comes from the Chinese (kanji 漢字) Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
19 Japanese language LexiconYamato- kotoba or Wago (Japanese words), e.g やま yama (mountain) Kango (Sino-Japanese words), e.g 山 san (mountain) Gairaigo (loan words), e.g マウンテン バイク (mountain bike) onomatopoeia Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
20 Japanese sound inventoryThe basic phonological unit for building Japanese words is the syllable Japanese vowels are simple – the Japanese language has only five vowels, /a, i, u, e, o/. Vowel can be short or long, but no diphthongs in Japanese – diphthong-like sequences are always pronounced as two syllables e.g. English: /ai/ - as in sky, high, cry, Japanese: /ai/ - 愛(ai, love)、アイスクリーム(ice cream) 貝(kai, Shellfish)、 Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
21 Japanese sound inventorymorae are sub-syllabic units and morae often overlap with syllables Unlike English, all Japanese syllables are open either V or CV/CCV type syllables are allowed A consonant is never followed by another consonant in Japanese Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
22 speech sounds and 46 Kana lettersA mora is a single unit of timing The Japanese writing system of kana is based on moras, placing one kana on each mora The basic consonant-vowel (CV) based kana letters contain a set of 5 vowels Basic Kana table kana characters are organized in terms of 5 types of morae: V, CV, CCV, nasal coda (N), and geminate consonant (Q) Basic kana table - kana characters are organized in terms of 5 types of morae: V, CV, CCV, nasal coda (N), and geminate consonant (Q) Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
23 How many units in the word ‘Edinburgh’? Syllable vs. Mora English Edinburgh /ˈɛdɪnbərə; -brə/ Japanese エジンバラ /e-zi-N-ba-ra/ Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
24 Pronunciation tips at word levelJapanese is a pitch-accent language The rise and fall of the pitch is a characteristic of Japanese, so: pay attention to high and low pitch of each word which can have an effect on meaning pay also attention to length of vowels vowel can be short or long Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
25 Can I check the pitch pattern of words?Yes, you can with paper-based and online dictionaries ame hashi rain chopsticks sweets bridge e.g. Japanese textbooks also show the pitch pattern of words when introducing new words Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
26 Practice-1 say ‘hello’ in JapaneseKonnichi wa こんにちは How many sound units do you feel? Where do you position your tongue for ‘n’ in ‘kon’? syllabic N(ん) can be a syllable on its own, and this sound do not exist in English practice holding the N to create the proper consonant your mouth will be closed as you do this. Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
27 Practice-2 say ‘lunch’ in Japaneseranchi ランチ Japanese has no distinction between R and L Japanese R can be found in the ら(ra)-line らりるれろ in the kana table. These R-line sounds are closer to English D. position, position, position! to produce authentic R sound Tips - say D and check your tongue position – it should touching the ridge right behind your two front teeth. Japanese R らりるれろ should be produced at this position Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
28 Practice-3 say ‘school’ in Japanesegakko がっこう（学校） Japanese has double consonants like Italian “tt”（kitte きって stamp） “kk”（gakko がっこう school） “pp”（kippu きっぷ ticket） If you are Italian speaker, you will have no problem learning double consonant Japanese words. Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
29 Practice-4 say ‘beer’ in Japanesebiiru ビール Can you hear different length ? in: building (biru) vs beer (biiru) Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
30 Summary - Three items! The Japanese language treats three sound units as a syllable syllabic N the double consonants The double (long) vowels These units are well-known to create a pronunciation difficulty for learners of Japanese Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
31 A teaching method for eliciting phonological (moraic) awarenessJapanese phonetic teachers often use body movements to show sense of rhythm This is known as the Verbo-tonal method (VT method) for Japanese accent teaching Let’s try! (N = syllabic N) oto (sound) – otto (husband) seNeN (thousand yen) – seNneN (a millennium) kite (to come) – kitte (stamp) Teachers note: the VT method of phonetic correction works well for Japanese accent teaching at the word level (words containing double consonants, long vowel, and syllabic N) Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
32 Bonus slides Japanese tongue twistersIn Japanese, tongue twisters are called 早口言葉 (はやくちことば): literally “fast mouth words. Tongue twisters are great for getting a grip on speaking a new language. Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
33 Japanese tongue twistersCan you say? Sumomo (Japanese plum) Momo (peach) Use metronome – speed Make 2 groups: G-1 (play tongue twisters), G-2 (Cheerers かけ声【ハイ！ ソーレッ！】 hi/ soul let) Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
34 Japanese tongue twistersCan you say? mo mo no uchi sumomo mo momo mo momo no uchi すもも も もも も もも の うち Both plums and peaches are members of the peach family Teachers’ note - （１）individual practice/ pair practice T: check if they managed ２）Explain this tongue twisters can practice with 4 beats → practice (all) →metronome（speed ）（３）practice hi/ soul let → all - （G-1+ G2） → change the part → All Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
35 Japanese tongue twistersGroup-A: tongue twisters すもも も もも も もも の うち Group-B: Cheerers (1) Hi (2) So-re (soul let) Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt
36 Thank you! Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt [email protected]Japanese for Young Learners [6 week teacher CPL workshop 2017] Yoko Matsumoto-Sturt