Free materials help teaching foreign kids at primary school
The number of foreign children who needed special instruction on the Japanese language at public schools surpassed 20,000 according to September 2005 statistics, almost four times larger than the figure from 1991, when the Education, Science and Technology Ministry began conducting such surveys. The 2005 survey shows that the largest single linguistic group, at nearly 40 percent of the total, comprises Portuguese speakers, mostly the children of Brazilians who have come to Japan to work.
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies has been developing learning aids for Brazilian children studying at public primary schools in the hope they will serve as aid to enable them to take classes together with their Japanese schoolmates. Some of these learning materials were made public on the university's Web site at the start of the new school year on April 1.
Named "Project Toucan" after the popular Brazilian bird, the project is led by the university's Center for Multilingual Multicultural Education and Research. It is funded by Mitsui and Co., a trading house that has been tackling the educational issues of Brazilian children living in Japan as one of its corporate social responsibility activities.
Currently open to the public are teaching materials related to addition and subtraction, as well as kanji studied in the first to third grades.
The math material is based on a textbook written in 2000 by Morihisa Okura, 54, a former primary school teacher who is an expert on teaching foreign students at Japanese public schools. The textbook is intended mainly for children from non-kanji-using countries to learn addition and subtraction while at the same time learning the Japanese required to take mainstream arithmetic classes.
Project Toucan has adapted the textbook's material specifically for Brazilian children, adding a teachers' manual that discusses points they should be aware of in teaching them.
For example, the teachers' manual says the Portuguese word "cen" means "100," but its pronunciation is quite similar to that of "sen," meaning 1,000 in Japanese--a possible source of confusion for some Brazilian children.
It also introduces differences between Brazilian and Japanese customs related to giving change. In the South American country, cashiers count up from the amount due to the amount offered, instead of subtracting one from the other. In other words, if a customer hands over 10 reals (one real=60 yen) for a six-real purchase, the cashier would count out the notes in their change by saying, "seven, eight, nine, 10" rather than calculating "10 minus six equals four."
The kanji materials developed for this project, titled Gosto Muito de Kanji (I Love Kanji), are filled with illustrations to help Brazilian children understand the meanings of kanji.
Before unveiling the materials to the public, the center asked teachers at public primary schools in three areas with many Brazilian residents to check their usability. Among them was Masako Chino, 53, at Nakashioda Primary School in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture.
"Compared to pictures featured in kanji drills for Japanese children, the illustrations [in Gosto Muito de Kanji] are simplified for Brazilians to easily get the ideas behind the kanji, and the textbooks also offer gamelike activities before the writing exercises--such as one requiring children to draw lines to connect kanji and their meanings," Chino said. "As such, the materials were easily welcomed by foreign children as they helped them enjoy learning kanji by using their eyes."
Chino, who has been in charge of a Japanese class for foreign students at the school for more than a decade, herself has had difficulty finding suitable materials for her students. "Making the materials open to the public on the Internet has a great significance as it allows us to download them for free after checking the contents," she said.
In addition, the downloadable materials are copyright-free.
"Teachers are free to process the materials just as they need, depending on the children they are dealing with," said Prof. Masaaki Takahashi, 61, head of the center. "By offering these materials, we hope to help reduce the difficulties and burdens facing those teaching Brazilian children as much as possible."
Chino also pointed out that the materials would be great help particularly for schools that do not have large enough numbers of foreign students to set up a special Japanese class. In such cases, homeroom teachers to whom the children are assigned often find themselves at a loss over what and how to teach them.
Through its Web site, Project Toucan will allow those teaching Brazilian children to share not only the materials, but also information on teaching approaches--the site encourages users to report on how they use the materials and will upload some of the feedback gathered. The center will also improve the materials based on user comments.
The menu of school subjects will also be expanded. By the end of next year, the center plans to develop materials to cover all kanji, arithmetic and natural science learned at the primary school level.
As Project Toucan is part of the center's broader scheme to develop learning materials for foreign students at public primary schools, it will also create teaching materials for speakers of other languages based on those initially developed for Brazilians. The first of these efforts, which began earlier this month, is the development of a version for Filipino speakers.
The materials can be downloaded at www.tufs.ac.jp/common/mlmc/kyouzai/brazil/.