Contrastive Studies of Linguistic Expressions II

Key Features

Every year many students who hope to become Japanese language instructors in the future take my class. Of those, many think that this class is simply an extension of their "Japanese learning," however students must grasp the following concepts first.

• "Japanese study" and "Researching the Japanese language" are two different things.
• This class is not a place for you to "receive instruction from the teacher," but a place for you to "think for myself."

Next, I want students to think about the following examples of problems in Japanese pedagogy and their meanings.

• Watashi ha kare (ni/to) hanasu. (I want to talk to/with him)
• Watashi ha 10ji (ni/de) neru. (I slept at/in 10 o'clock)
• kaze de batan to doa (ga/wo) (aita/aketa/akerareta). (The wind opened the door with a bang/The door was opened by the wind with a bang/The door opened by the wind with a bang)

In this class, by combining both native Japanese speakers with Japanese as a second language learners and making use of the intuitive sense of native speakers and the experience of second language learners, I want students to think of more persuasive grammar explanations. Students will be split into groups of 4 to 5 people and each group will debate another group and, by using competing theories, come to a better understanding of the problems.

Moreover, as the Japanese second language learners are native speakers of Chinese, Korean, English, Russian, Indonesian, Thai, Malaysian, and Armenian, among other languages, we can use their experience with their native languages to come to a deeper understanding of the unique features of the Japanese language.

In this way, through a fun and engaging atmosphere students will acquire Japanese language teaching pedagogy based on the fundamentals of contrastive linguistics, analysis of usage mistakes, language acquisition, and the fundamentals of Japanese grammar.

Course Schedule

Course contents will be based on the following subjects, but are subject to change according to students' interests and the conditions of the class.

Semester I

Session	Contents
1	Orientation
2	Examining Surveys and the Corpus
3	The difference between the particles "ha" and "ga"
4	The form of case making particles
5	Differences in consciousness regarding transitive/intransitive verbs between native speakers and second language learners
6-15	Student presentations and discussion

Semester II

Session	Contents
1	Orientation
2	Compound verbs: combining V1 + V2
3	Analysis of second language learners' mistakes
4	Case making particles and constructing sentences
5	Tense and aspect
6-15	Student presentations and discussion

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