Autumn 1995

Note: In a few instances the author used Japanese characters, ommitted here because the scanner we used to prepare the text for the web didn't read Japanese. We also ommitted the paper's appendices due to length.
 
 

ACTION VERBS IN JAPANESE
 

"Kiritsu!" several seventh grade students shouted when the morning bell rang in the first year Japanese class. Everybody stood up, and two students hurried up to the front of the class, telling other students who did not stand up to follow the command. "Kiotsuke!" they said. Everybody straightened up. Finally, the two who had come to the front said, "ohayoo qozaimasu" and bowed. The rest of the class responded to them by saying the same word and doing the action. As soon as the students sat down, the teacher took attendance.

This military style of greeting is used in almost all schools in Japan. When a class starts, students say "good morning" to their teacher and "good bye" to him/her when the school is over. The scene was pleasantly reminiscent of Japanese schools. Although it was pleasant to see the students greeting just like Japanese kids, as I explored the details of the lessons and students' responses, the depth of the teacher's misconceptions about the students' understanding and the students' misunderstanding about the language through their existing schemata became apparent.

The main objective of the lesson on my first day of the observation was to introduce the daily action verbs. They were the following words: "to eat," "to drink," "to buy," "to listen," "to watch," "to read," " to study," "to work" and "to play tennis."

The Japanese teacher, Naomi (a pseudonym) who is Japanese, passed out handouts which had pictures of the actions. (See Appendix A) Then she told the students to repeat after her. She introduced the action verbs and other necessary vocabulary for picture #1 in the handout. (See Appendix A) For example, she uttered, "biji-san wa" (Mr. Busy+particle "wa") and the students repeated, "bijii-san wa." She continued to introduce other vocabulary, "ban-gohan o" (dinner+particle "o"), and the students followed, "ban-gohan o." She uttered the last word, "Tabemasu" (to eat), and the students repeated. After repeating this pattern three times, she explained the meaning of the individual words and wrote down the Japanese words in Roman letters and the meanings in English on the black board. While she was writing them down, she told the students to copy them in their notebooks. Then she kept introducing the rest of the vocabulary in this way, from #2 to #9 in the handout. (See Appendix A) It took about 20 minutes to finish this. Next, she put the individual vocabulary together into one sentence. She made the students repeat after her again, "bijii-san wa ban-gohan o tabemasu," which means "Mr. Busy eats dinner." She repeated this three times. After the first demonstration, she continued to demonstrate the complete sentences #2 through #9 in the handout. Then she asked the students what the Japanese sentence is for #1, and they answered it in Japanese. She chose the rest of the sentences at random and made the students say the corresponding Japanese sentences.

Next, the students were assigned to work in pairs to practice the sentences according to the pictures. While the students were practicing, I was able to walk around and help the students. Some students seemed to understand what they were doing and were able to construct the sentences, although most students were relying on their notebooks; however, others did not know what was going on in the class. Their word order was incorrect, and they forgot to use particles. They did not know the vocabulary they had been studying because they had not copied down the vocabulary in their notebooks. Naomi went around the class and corrected the sentences by making the students repeat the sentence many times until they could say it right. Her next step was to make sure of the students' comprehension of the meaning of the Japanese sentence. She asked the students in English what the meanings of the individual words and the full sentences were.

As soon as she learned that most students could tell the meaning of the vocabulary and the sentences, she started to review handout items #1 through #9 by making the students repeat full Japanese sentences after her. (See Appendix A) Next, individual students were asked to say sentences based on the pictures in the handout. If a student could not say it correctly, the sentence was corrected immediately, and the student repeated the sentence until he/she was able to say it correctly. At the end of the class, the students sang Japanese songs beautifully. I was very impressed how well they could sing the songs in Japanese.

On the second day of my observation, Naomi focused on practicing Hiragana (one of the Japanese writing systems) and reviewing the daily action verbs. She told me that she had introduced the students to both Hiragana characters and Katakana characters at the same time in September. (See Appendix B and C)

First, she passed out handouts to the students to practice Hiragana writing. (See Appendix D) Today's practice with Hiragana included the following 15 Hiragana characters: (ta), (chi), (tsu), (te), (to),(na), (ni), (nu), (ne), (no), (ha), (hi), (fu), (he), (ho). Naomi uttered the Hiragana characters, and the students repeated after her several times. In addition, she pronounced each vocabulary word in the handout, such as [taiko] "drum," [uchi] "house," etc. (See Appendix D) Then the students were assigned to practice writing Hiragana. They copied
down each vocabulary item in Hiragana three times and then wrote the appropriate Hiragana in the boxes according to the pronunciation of the characters. (See Appendix E) In addition, she told the students to write down the words in Roman letters next to the Hiragana.

Her next objective was to add additional information for the action verbs. She introduced an interrogative word, nani "what," into the sentences which the students had been practicing. Before she demonstrated the interrogative question, she wrote down the word nani in Roman letters and the meaning in English. Then she asked the question sentences to the students such as "bijii-san wa nani o tabemasu ka?" which means "What does Mr. Busy eat?" None of the students was able to answer her question, so she told them they were supposed to answer "bijii-san wa ban-gohan o tabemasu" which means "Mr. Busy eats dinner." After the repetition of questioning and answering #1 through #9 in the daily activity handout (See Appendix A) was finished, the students worked in pairs. Naomi noticed that several students were not doing their work, so she decided to ask individual students questions. A student who was not doing his work was called on first and had to stand up. If the student could not answer her question, then he was not allowed to sit down. Immediately the class became quiet and paid attention to her questions. She was using negative reinforcement, fear of humiliation/being shamed, to motivate her students. I was uncomfortable being in the class because it reminded me that I had to do the same thing when I was a student in Japan, and it always made me feel bad.

There were five to ten minutes left, so Naomi called on one student and made him draw a picture of an action on the black board. The rest of the students described what the person in the picture was doing. The game got the attention of the students, and they all participated. After two days of observation, I asked seventh graders Mike and Lisa (both pseudonyms) in the first year Japanese class whether I could interview them or not. They were willing to help me, so I arranged the time to meet them separately.

I focused on Grammar, Writing, Listening, and Speaking and Culture taught in Japanese language class in order to understand how students construct meaning from instruction and how children try to make sense of what the teacher says and does.

GRAMMAR

Naomi taught Japanese lessons in English. Her pattern of instruction was that first she introduced grammar, and then Romanized spelling of Japanese words and English meanings; finally, she reinforced pronunciation and meaning of Japanese words through repetition.

She introduced grammar first because Japanese grammar and English grammar are very different from each other. That is how Japanese people used to study English in Japan. While the order in English sentences follows a subject, verb and object pattern, Japanese sentences are subject, object and verb. In addition, an unfamiliar constituent in Japanese sentences is the particle. Particles are subject makers, object makers and postpositions, which are placed after the words. Native English speaking children may know the term "preposition," but not "postposition." From my observation, I learned that some students were confused with the word order and particles. Note these two examples:

1. Bijii-san wa tabemasu ban-gohan.
"Mr. Busy eats dinner."

This is a perfect sentence in English, but not in Japanese. Their immediate response was to apply English word order to Japanese intuitively.

2. Bijii-san ban-gohan tabemasu.
"Mr. Busy dinner eats."

In this case, although the word order is perfect for Japanese language, the particles "wa" and "o" have been omitted because there are no particles in English.

Another interesting discovery is that several students used two verbs in one sentence. For example, they used an action verb and a be-verb in the same sentence:

Bijii-san wa ban-gohan o tabemasu desu.
"Mr. Busy dinner eats is."
(Mr. Busy eats dinner.)
 

The last problem I discovered is that some students used an interrogative word and an object in the same sentence:

Bijii-san wa nani o ban-gohan o tabemasu ka.
"Mr. Busy what dinner eat ?
(What does Mr. Busy eat?)

I asked a student who made the mistake why he had two verbs in the same sentence, but he did not know. I asked him again, "Can you use verb 'is' and 'eat' in the same sentence in English?" He looked puzzled. I gave him an example sentence. I asked him, "Can you say 'Mr. Busy is eats dinner'?" Although he said "No," he still looked confused. I could not figure out why he could not understand this simple rule. It bothered me a lot; however, a question came to mind, "Do they (students) know English grammar?"

I decided to ask Mike and Lisa about English grammar on my interview day. Mike told me that he knew verbs, but he had a difficult time figuring out what subjects and objects are in English. On the other hand, Lisa knew what subjects and verbs were; however, she did not know what objects were. I continued to ask questions, "What about English rules? Do you know about them?" Lisa said, "What do you mean 'rules'?"

"I mean, for example, do you know verbs in English are always used after subjects?" "Oh, yeah, but I was not conscious about it," she said. Mike replied, "I think there are rules, but I am not sure what they are."

These students did not know what grammar is exactly. Why should they? They do not need to know English grammar in order to use the language. It is their native language. Chomsky argues that a "language organ" helps children to establish their underlying grammar rules unconsciously. (Gardner, p33) If he is right, it makes sense that the students got confused putting sentences together. They tried to apply their unconscious grammar rules to construct a Japanese sentence. They also tried to apply the conscious grammar rules which were taught by Naomi to construct the sentence. Both times they failed because Japanese grammar rules were taught to the students who do not know or know only a little about the structure of the English sentence. The students were expected to quickly learn the structure of Japanese sentences without even having a conscious knowledge of the structure of the English sentence.

What I am trying to say here is that when children learn to speak, they do not learn terms like "verbs," "objects," etc. For example, the mother tells the child to pick up the ball and the child picks the ball up. She does not teach the child that the word "pick" is a verb. Teaching grammar is not effective for the student learning at this level. Bruner recommends that the teacher should "scaffold" lessons to get "the learner to discover on his own..." (Bruner, xiv) This approach mimics the process found in first language acquisition and avoids the confusion that can arise with too much grammar instruction. He goes beyond Chomsky's competence/performance dichotomy by stressing the importance of interaction and functional use of language to help learners to develop strategies for understanding and creating language. (Bruner,xiii, xiv) If the language is taught in context, the students have much better understanding of the language and are able to discover indirectly the underlying grammar rules within the target language.

WRITING

Unlike English, Japanese has three types of written characters: Hiragana Katakana and Chinese characters. (See Appendix B and C for Hiragana and Katakana). As I discussed before, Naomi used Roman letters all the time instead of Hiragana. She also introduced Hiragana and Katakana at the same time. I do not recall learning them both at the same time when I was an elementary student in Japan. I am not sure why she introduced them together.

In my observation, I noticed some students wrote down the Hiragana character (n) instead of (na) while they were practicing their Hiragana writing. For example, they wrote [XXX] instead of [XXX] "Fish." (See the Roman lettered word in. #3 in Appendix E) Furthermore, they were unable to find three Hiragana characters: (shi), (chi) and (tsu). (See the Roman lettered words in #12, 2 and 9 in Appendix E). I also noticed many students were using the Hiragana chart to match Romanized words and phonetic sounds to find the appropriate Hiragana word. I suspected the presence of Roman letters meaning two different things would be problematic (See appendix B and E).

When I interviewed Lisa and Mike, I realized that my prediction was right. I let them write Hiragana words which include (na), (shi), (chi), and (tsu) from the Hiragana chart. (See Appendix B) They could not write (shi), (chi) and (tsu) but they could write (na). I asked Lisa, "Why weren't you able to write those words? I saw you were writing them correctly when you were practicing the Hiragana characters in class." "Well, ........ they were different from what I saw in the handout," she said. I showed her the hand out (See Appendix E), "You mean this?" "Yes! I just copied from there," she smiled.

The students who were not able to write those words were copying from the Hiragana chart, and others who were able to write them were using the handout to find the characters. The Hiragana chart was based on phonetic sounds; on the other hand, the Hiragana characters in the handout were written in Roman characters. For example, [XX] phonetically is [ti], which a student unfamiliar with phonetic alphabets would think is a regular English "T" sound. Students could not have known that the phonetic [ti] is (chi) in the Roman Alphabet. Although the phonetic [XX] and the familiar Roman Alphabet sound are [na] and (na), some students wrote [N] instead of [na] when they were practicing writing Hiragana. In the Hiragana chart, there are phonetic sounds [n] and [N] which are nasal. The nasal sound is made by allowing air to pass through the nasal passages; however, the phonetic sound [N] is made by air passing through only nasal passages and it stands by itself, unlike [n]. The phonetic sounds are unfamiliar to the students; therefore, they could not distinguish between [N] and [n]. The problem here is that the students got confused because they were given two different pieces of information, the phonetic sound system and the Roman alphabet, without getting a clear explanation. My question is whether we need to introduce Japanese words using the Roman alphabet. Introducing the Roman alphabet helps the teacher instruct the students because they are easy to remember for the students; however, it does not help the students' writing skill. As Bruner points out, this instruction is for the teacher, but not for the students. (Bruner, xv)

Introducing the Roman alphabet is analogous to Donald Norman's iceberg. The teacher postulated the underlying structure (student's knowledge) based only on visible surface-level data--what the students produced. In fact, even if the students happened to get something right, it might not have been for the reasons the teacher thought, because she was not cognizant of the complexity of the tasks implicit in her exercises. The next time, the students might not produce correct answers, even if they followed the same surface-level data. For example, in the Romanized Hiragana alphabet "a" is pronounced [a] as in "father." There is no other way to pronounce this in Japanese; however, in English, there is another way to pronounce "a," such as [a] in "same." It is possible that the students used their existing schema for English sounds and postulated an inappropriate underlying structure. Furthermore, introducing the phonetic sound system to the students layered additional complexity on the writing system. It is inevitable for them to misunderstand the structure of the writing system when there are two unfamiliar writing systems introduced on top of their own schema for the English writing system. It is also inevitable that the teacher will not know which system or mixture of systems students are operating with.

LISTENING

Naomi was using the grammar-translation method, which focuses on introducing the grammar explanations and translation and the audio lingual method, which emphasizes repetition of the sentence in the target language. Her instruction was as follows.

Naomi: "Bijii-san wa"
Students: "Bijii-san wa"
Naomi: "What does that mean?"
Students: "Mr. Busy"
Naomi: "Nani o"
Students: "Nani o"
Naomi: "What does that mean?"
Students "What"
Naomi: "Tabemasu"
Students: "Tabemasu"
Naomi: "What does that mean?"
Students: "Eat"
Naomi: "ka"
Students: "ka"
Naomi: "What does that mean?"
Students: "Question mark"
Naomi: "Bijii-san wa nani o tabemasuka"
Students: "Bijii-san wa nani o tabemasu ka"
Naomi: "What does that mean?"
Students: "[mixed response] Mr. Busy eat..."
Naomi: "No, no,no! what does Mr. Busy eat?"
Students "What does Mr. Busy eat?"
Naomi: "Very good!"
 

After Naomi repeated this type of instruction in lessons #1 through #9 (See Appendix A), she let them work in pairs to practice "Wh" interrogatives and responses. She made a student who was not working with his partner stand up and asked him a question. Because the student could not answer her question, he was not allowed to sit down. The class became very quiet and students took out their notebooks which had the answers to prepare for being called on. Almost all students could respond to her questions. At the end of the class, she told the students they did a good job and they were better than another class which is also 1st year Japanese; therefore, they can move on to a new lesson. This reminds me of "correct answer-compromise" and "teacher fallacy" in Gardner/Boix-Mansilla's article. (p. 202) The students listened to what the teacher said and mimicked her. They were able to say the sentences because some students could perhaps memorize them, and others just read the sentences in Roman letters from their notebooks. Furthermore, she might have thought the students understood because they were able to answer her questions.

My interview with Mike and Lisa was held in the huge lunch room with tremendous noise. I asked Mike a couple questions in Japanese. "Maiku-san wa nani o tabemasu ka," I asked. "Ah...could you repeat that?" he replied. I repeated, but he still did not understand what I was saying. So, I told him, "What are you going to eat?" He smiled and answered my question in Japanese, although it took him a while to construct a sentence. He also said that Japanese is very difficult because he is not good at memorizing words. The same things happened to Lisa when I asked her the questions. Their responses in the class were so quick; however, they were not able to function well in a real situation. They told me that first, they listened to the sound from my mouth to understand what vocabulary I used, and next, they translated into English. After they understood what I was saying, they thought of the answer in English and then translated it into Japanese. That is why it took a while to answer my questions.

They were able to answer Naomi's questions because there is little need to think when the answer is memorized. Automatic correct response does not mean he/she comprehended what he/she was saying. Skinner's method seems not to allow for flexibility in generating language because it inhibits the "unconscious nature of learning structure." (p8, Bruner) As Bruner says children have an ability to generate a sentence in different ways without changing the meaning of the sentence. If we do not introduce alternative kinds of communication to the children, then they will not be able to activate their learning structure.

SPEAKING AND CULTURE

Naomi's lesson plan was heavily focused on repetition, translation and memorization in a non-communicative setting. When she asked, "Bijii-san wa nani o nomimasu ka" (What is Mr. Busy going to drink?), a student answered, "Bijii-san wa koora o nomimasu" (Mr. Busy will drink coke). I was encouraged because the student was able to make a sentence by using his imagination; however, Naomi corrected his answer because he was not following the hand-out which shows the picture of Mr. Busy drinking coffee. (See #2 in Appendix A) The student was generating another sentence with different content based on the sentence he has learned. However, again, the children's "unconscious nature of learning structure" (Bruner, p8) was inhibited because the structure of Naomi's teaching was alien to the structure of content.

When I asked Lisa, "If you have to take me to MacDonalds, and I cannot speak English at all, what are you going to do at the restaurant in order to help me?" She struggled to answer and finally said "Konnichiwa!" (hello). I thought I was not asking her a too difficult question, but she used a totally unsuitable word. Mike, on the other hand, did not even try to communicate with me. He was frustrated and said, "I can't speak Japanese. You know that." "That's not true. You know Japanese. You could ask me what I am going to drink or eat like, couldn't you?," I said. "Oh yeahhh...," said Mike. After that we could communicate a little, and Mike could order a coke and a hamburger at the imaginary MacDonalds restaurant. First, I thought that they could not communicate with me because of the limitations imposed by the expressions they were taught. However, I realized that is not the only reason. There was something else that inhibited their intuitive grasp of language concepts.

In the class the students practiced making sentences according to the picture on their hand-out. Naomi did not point out that Japanese present tense can also be used as future tense; for example, "tabemasu" has two different tenses, "to eat" and "going to eat." In a communicative setting, it is rare to describe what the third person does unless two people are talking about the third person's daily life. In fact, the present simple tense is comparatively rare in basic communicative situations. For example, in English, it's rare to say something like, "What do you eat?" A far more common English sentence might be, "What are you going to eat?"

When I asked Lisa what she would do in the restaurant to help me order, if she was thinking about English expressions such as "What are you going to eat?" then it is unlikely that she would come up with the Japanese sentence, "what do you eat?" Naomi might not have been aware of this important concept. As Schwab emphasizes in his discussion of structure, if the vocabulary and phrases are appropriately introduced in a context, the students will be able to communicate in real situations.

From the two examples I have pointed out above, I question how the students can possibly establish communicative skills while the Instruction was introduced in a non-communicative setting. Vygotsky concurs with Gardner and Bruner. He claims that "the learner acquires knowledge and skills by interacting with language in social contexts." (Shrum, p182) As he says, if the appropriate structures of the language are introduced in real situations, the students will be able to grasp the unconscious rules and use them to communicate in real situations.

Another point in my interview is that the students had their own interpretation about Japanese culture. In Japanese class, as I described earlier, all students bowed before the class started. They seemed very excited and proud about bowing as if they were special. This action relates to matters of formality and respect according to relative social status. But before proceeding with this, I must first make a point about formality in Japanese language. Japanese consists of formal and informal forms. In formal conversation, there are respectful, humble, and neutral expressions. Respectful expressions are used when one refers to the superior's action or belongings in order to elevate the superiors. Humble expressions are used for oneself, family, and members of one's social group to make the other higher than the speaker. Finally, neutral expressions are used for oneself, equals, and inferiors. Depending on the, social status of the person one speaks to, different verbs which have the same meaning are used.

What the students are learning in the class are neutral expressions of formal Japanese. One of the features of the formality is the use of polite forms. The polite form, is characterized by the endings "desu" and gimasu." In informal Japanese, the polite form is omitted, and the particles are often left out. Japanese children almost never use formal expressions among themselves, but they do to address the teachers. Japanese greetings, "konnichiwa" (hello) and "konbanwa" (good evening), are used as both formal and informal expressions. However, the greeting, "ohayoo gozaimasu" (good morning), is a formal expression. When children greet their teacher, they say "ohayoo gozaimasu" and with their friend, they say only "ohayoo." During their early childhood, they establish this hierarchical system gradually.

In my interviews, I found a very interesting perspective from two different individuals. Both Mike and Lisa's response for the teacher and for their friend was the same, "ohayoo gozaimasu" (good morning) when I asked them to say "good morning" according to different contexts. Mike has been taking a Japanese martial arts class, AIKIDOO, for three years and is familiar with Japanese customs, especially the manners. His practice starts and ends with a greeting and bowing. He is pretty sure that the bowing represents a respect for whoever he is bowing to. However, he claimed that the language he has been studying in Japanese class is an informal language. The reason he gave me was that he has been using the Japanese greeting with his friend and his masters whenever he goes to the lessons. There was no hierarchical barrier between them at least for Mike. Lisa, on the other hand, thought Japanese language was a formal language, and there are no informal expressions in Japanese. She took a Japanese class when she was an elementary school student, and somehow got this idea. Although both Mike and Lisa had the same idea about bowings, from their experience, both had misconceptions about Japanese formality and informality which are deeply involved with the social status of the speaker, the listener and the third person who is talked about.

Mike had used his existing English schema to apply Japanese language as an informal language; however, he failed to apply his experience to the bowing because this was new to him. So he established a new framework in which bowing is for respect. Lisa also used her schema to understand the Japanese language, but she also added additional information to establish her new framework for Japanese language as a formal language. Both agreed that the bowing is for respect, and they drew pictures of greeting with friends in both American and Japanese ways. (See Appendix F and G) There was a distinction between the pictures, in the American way of greeting and Japanese way of greeting. However, in the actual situation, there is a subtle bowing or no bowing between friends in Japan. That does not mean there is no respect. The bowing is rather involved with the relationship between people based on the social status. It is very difficult for the students of younger age to understand this. Naomi did not introduce the depth of formality and informality.

Should we expect children to speak in a formal style or expose them to more natural, informal speech that is typical of speech of native Japanese children? Since the latter choice sounds logical, children should speak like children; however, the danger of teaching "natural, children's speech" is that the. student may unknowingly continue to use informal speech later in life in situations that demand more formality. From my experience of teaching Japanese, this is quite evident in adults who learned "street Japanese." Their speech tends to be too casual in some situations and creates an offensive atmosphere for their listeners. They had a difficult time learning the formal speech after internalizing informal speech. However, it is easy to learn informal speech after internalizing formal speech. I am not sure the middle school students can handle two systems of speech, formal and informal, since the class room is the only place they can study Japanese. It might be better to stick with formal language at this age level; however, we should clearly explain the concepts of formality and informality in Japanese language.

In conclusion, I have learned from this observation that what the teacher determines from the students' representation, and what the students get from the teacher are often mismatched. Schwab said "we will need to face the fact that methods are rarely if even neutral ... the outcome will inevitably be a corruption of that content.." (p 242) Naomi made the curriculum for herself not for the students. In other words, she was using the easiest way to teach the language-translating the words, using the Roman alphabet, repeating the sentences and encouraging memorization. If the structure of teaching language is out of context, the students will not be able to learn the language effectively.

Although as Schwab says 'corruption is inevitable "if the structure ...is alien to" content, the question is how much is too much? This case in my view represents corruption serious enough to impede student learning. Both the schemata and the "unconscious nature of learning structure" are indispensable for language learning; at the same time, the interactive approach helps the language learner to develop a variety of strategies to understand the context and generate language.

REFLECTIONS

This student learning project made me rethink how to teach because the curriculum I make may not necessarily work for the students. In order to make good curriculum for students, I should always be sensitive to students' learning, ready to change the method if it does not work and always look for new ways.

I really wanted to go back to the middle school and ask Lisa and Mike a couple things which I did not even think of at the time. I wanted to ask more details about how they get misconceptions from other people and about future and present tense for verbs.

Another aspect of this assignment that is important for me is that I was able to interview the students and know the problems they are struggling with. When you are a student you do not know if the way you are learning is appropriate or not. If you get good grades, then you and other people think you are smart, and if you get bad grades you are stupid. This whole concept might be wrong in many situations. Instead, the curriculum itself might have a problem. I might not have been able to recognize this problem without my experience in this assignment. This experience was very valuable for me to understand the complexity of students' learning structures.

I really appreciate that Naomi let us observe her class. I also tried to focus on analyzing the students' learning, not the teacher's teaching; however, the more I analyzed their learning process, the more I found the problems in the structure of teaching.

There were things I liked about her class. I really liked the Japanese greetings she has introduced to the students. Although I mentioned the use of negative reinforcement, she did use the positive reinforcement by giving them candy in the last week of the observation. When she used pictures to introduce the actions, I thought it was good idea. Pair work was used in her class to focus on student centered instruction. There were several things I liked; however, I would suggest several things to avoid impeding students' learning. If I taught the class, I would introduce neither the Roman alphabet nor phonetic sound system to the students; instead, I would use the Hiragana writing system to avoid confusing them. I would not translate Japanese into English; instead I would use the whole language approach. I would speak as much Japanese as possible using a contextualized approach by introducing real situations to appeal to their learning structure. I would let them use a variety of expressions to describe one idea to establish flexibility according to the situation. Finally, I would clearly introduce formality and informality in Japanese culture and introduce formal language with explanations about why formal language is used, in order to avoid the problem of fossilization of informal speech.