Abstract
A language assistant (LA) program was introduced into a university-level Japanese program. The LAs in this program consisted of Japanese study abroad students, that is English as a second language students, coming to study from Japanese universities for either one semester or one academic year, as well as American learners returning from a one-year academic study abroad program in Japan. In the southeastern region of the United States, the Japanese language is not yet considered a major foreign language, thus few opportunities exist for American learners to connect with native speakers of Japanese. The LA program endeavors to ease this limitation. It has been extremely beneficial for our American learners to have opportunities to communicate regularly with Japanese study abroad students in the classrooms. Furthermore, it was found tremendously valuable for Japanese study abroad students and greatly helpful for the instructors as well. This paper describes the procedures and examines the effectiveness of introducing an LA program into Japanese language classes. To analyze the program, questionnaires were distributed to LAs (N=20); five department instructors wrote comments concerning the program; and five Japanese language learners submitted reflection papers. Analyses of the qualitative data indicate that the LA program has many advantages for everyone participating.
Highlights
A language assistant (LA) program was introduced into a university-level Japanese program
This is true in learning a foreign language rather than in learning a second language1 because there are few occasions for JFL learners to meet with Japanese natives, especially in the southeastern region of the United States, and little opportunity to utilize their target language in their daily lives
While it might seem obvious that JFL learners would benefit from greatly from having Japanese university students regularly attended their Japanese language classes, some may question whether the Japanese LAs benefit from participating in the program as well
Summary
A language assistant (LA) program was introduced into a university-level Japanese program. The LA program endeavors to ease this limitation It has been extremely beneficial for our American learners to have opportunities to communicate regularly with Japanese study abroad students in the classrooms. While there is much research indicating the importance of interacting with native speakers of a target language when learning a language (Ellis, 1985; Scarcella & Oxford, 1992), providing such opportunities to speak and listen to develop their oral and aural abilities (Blake, 2008; Towndrow & Vallance, 2004) can often be difficult This is true in learning a foreign language rather than in learning a second language because there are few occasions for JFL learners to meet with Japanese natives, especially in the southeastern region of the United States, and little opportunity to utilize their target language in their daily lives. Japanese students coming to the United States to study abroad from Japanese universities were recruited to attend Japanese language classes as LAs and to communicate regularly with JFL learners. Japanese language learners may still have few opportunities to communicate with Japanese natives outside the classroom or in their community, with the addition of two LAs per class, students are given more opportunities to interact with Japanese native speakers or speakers with more linguistic resources in their classes or socially after class
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