Applying the Silent Way in Teaching Japanese Language to University Students in Taiwan

Abstract

The present study investigated the feasibility of applying the Silent Way in teaching Japanese to Taiwanese university students. A total of 168 (96 female and 72 male) students in a university in central Taiwan were the subjects of this study. They were studying Japanese as a general course, and were grouped in five classes ranging from freshmen to juniors. Some basic principles and techniques of the Silent Way were adopted in teaching them some vocabulary and 50 Japanese Hiragana sounds during six successive sessions in three weeks. Each administration took about 20 minutes embedded in the normal class time. A 25-item Hiragana sounds oral test was used as the pre-test and post-test in order to examine the effects of applying this method. Using a paired sample T-test (α ≤.05) significant difference between students’ knowledge of the Japanese sounds before and after the experiment was observed. However, comparing female and male students’ gained scores via applying a Mann Whitney U-test, no significant difference was observed. Thus, this study shows that the Silent Way can be used in teaching Japanese sounds and vocabulary, and that the effects for both females and males seem to be the same.