This presentation will demonstrate how the instruction of various practical writing practice of native speakers of Japanese can be incorporated into the curriculum of the elementary Japanese at college level by sharing the audience with actual examples of the assignments designed for the chapters of Nakama2, which had been implemented and rendered success at the University of Iowa and at Middlebury Summer Language School.
While the literature on the second language writing is abundant, it is still often the case that traditional compositions of an essay type with topics randomly chosen by the instructor are given to students without clear instructional purpose of such assignments. It is actually extremely rare, if any, however, that college students in Japan use the composition sheet (or 'genkooyooshi') to write an essay on their family or on their travel experience as a course assignment. Writing assignments in teaching of Japanese as a second language on college level should more adequately reflect the level of intellectual development of the students as well as their interests, and the stronger commitment is expected when these assignments have immediate real-life applications.
In this presentation, I will show how the vocabulary and the grammar of each chapter of Nakama2 and its functional theme can be tied to a particular writing practice by Japanese with the actual instructional details for each case. Then, I will further indicate how the same or similar writing assignments can be applied to the chapters of Genki2.
It is hoped that this presentation will stimulate the cooperation among teachers of Japanese in creation of templates for the instruction of practical writing of Japanese that will shared by everyone, contributing to the further development of writing instruction of Japanese as a second language that will conform to the idea of 5Cs advocated in the National Standards.