Name: Bridges Between Japanese Culture and Language Teaching
SKU: 1-0364-5669-2
Availability: InStock

Bridges Between Japanese Culture and Language Teaching

Edited By: Katsuya Izumi

£72.99

For teachers of Japanese, this collection offers practical ways to boost student engagement. It explains how to use cultural products—from anime and manga to the tea ceremony—to increase interest and tackle the problem of low enrollment in foreign language courses.

This collection of essays introduces various ways in which instructors of Japanese language and culture in universities and colleges can generate, maintain, and increase students’…

This collection of essays introduces various ways in which instructors of Japanese language and culture in universities and colleges can generate, maintain, and increase students’ interest in learning the Japanese language by using anime, manga, pop music, folktales, films, literary works, neighboring communities, tea ceremony, and calligraphy. The essays discuss various teaching experiences and projects of teachers and scholars in English-speaking countries such as the US, Australia, and New Zealand, and thus, the collection inevitably deals with the problem of low enrollment in foreign language courses. Explaining pedagogical theories and methods, this book will be a useful companion for teachers who are looking for specific Japanese cultural materials they should use and who want to learn how they should use various cultural aspects and products to enhance students’ engagement in learning the language and culture in higher education.

Katsuya Izumi is currently a senior lecturer and the Head of the Japanese Section in Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut, USA). He has taught Japanese language at all levels, Japanese literature and films, Japanese calligraphy as well as American literature and English writing. He has published essays on Japanese American experiences of internment camps during WWII depicted in Japanese American literature, Japanese animation films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Hosoda, and Makoto Shinkai, Japanese video games, and Japanese literature. His current pedagogical project is about how to use Japanese calligraphy to encourage college students to learn Japanese, and his research project is about the difference between Japanese imperialism and Western, mostly US, imperialism.

Katsuya Izumi, Yuki Yoshimura, Vance Schaefer, Hiromi Muranaka-Vuletich, Sumiko Iida, William Armour, Junko Ueno, Mitsue Tabata-Sandom, Kathryn Negrelli, Chiaki Takagi