HAMAMATSU, Shizuoka Prefecture: Foreign students get a helping hand

A college research center has developed a teaching program specifically designed to help Brazilian children living in Japan. The material can be easily downloaded from the Internet free of charge.

The Enshuhama Elementary School in Hamamatsu, where nearly a quarter of the students have foreign citizenship, is already trying the kanji and math teaching programs that were developed by the Center for Multilingual Multicultural Education and Research at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, based in Fuchu, Tokyo.

The material is used in after-school lessons offered at the elementary school. The tool can be downloaded from a computer and adapted to suit the language level of each student.

"There are many teachers who have a hard time trying to teach foreign students," Seiko Shaku, principal at Enshuhama Elementary said. "Sometimes the homeroom teacher is saddled with too much responsibility. I think the teaching material will come as a boon for the teachers."

Enshuhama Elementary has 417 students, of whom 96 are foreign nationals.

During regular school hours, the foreign children are "taken out" of their regular classes and receive extra training as a group to strengthen their Japanese.

In addition to these lessons, the school hosts optional after-school study sessions twice a week.
One afternoon, Keiko Sakurai was teaching an after-school math class for first-graders, using the material from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

She put up pictures of apples on the black board, following the textbook.

"How many apples do we get when we add four apples and five apples together?" she asked.
"We get nine apples!" the children chirped.

The students write their answers on answer sheets that were also downloaded from the Center Website at http://www.tufs.ac.jp/blog/ts/g/cemmer/index.html.

The students are solving math problems and learning how to add. But at the same time they learn how to count in Japanese, using the correct quantifier attributed to different things in Japanese. They also learn how to use the appropriate particles in a sentence by speaking out loud.

The text was developed by researchers who specialize in teaching foreign children, in collaboration with Japanese language teachers.

For math, for example, the idea is taught and outlined using easy Japanese that meets the student's speaking level.

Later on, appropriate Japanese expressions can be added on. The basic rule is "content first, Japanese later."

Illustrations and gadgets are used to visually stimulate the students, to fill in gaps and send information that can't be explained through words alone.

"In this class we aim at getting the children to solve math problems by reading the Japanese instructions," Sakurai said. "The program is perfectly suited for children who are able to read and write hiragana characters."

Besides Hamamatsu, schools in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture, and Ota, Gunma Prefecture, are also looking into introducing the teaching material at their schools. Both cities have large Brazilian communities.

Masaaki Takahashi, who heads the center, commented that product development was a two-way street. "We hope to continue refining the program by reflecting comments and input from the actual classrooms," Takahashi said.(IHT/Asahi: October 16,2007)
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