Douglas, M. et al. Japanese Language Across the Curriculum. Appendix A.

Appendix A. Course Description

"Japanese Track": A special track for those who want to develop reading skills in Japanese

We offer this year for the first time a special "Japanese track" for students who would like to further develop their reading skills in Japanese. In the Japanese track, you will be assigned to read some Japanese reading materials that are related to the English materials you will read with other students in the class. You will be provided with articles in both digitized and hard copy formats.

This approach, considered a promising approach in foreign language education, is called "Foreign Language Across the Curriculum" (FLAC). The rationale for FLAC is as follows: Foreign language education traditionally has been separated from other academic subject matter and students lack opportunities to maintain or further develop their language competence beyond the required language courses. Lambert (1991) states, "We expend almost all of our national resources for foreign language learning on first-time, low-level language learning among high school and college students, then watch those minimal skills decay and disappear through lack of use or reinforcement." FLAC aims at having students grapple with primary documents and scholarly texts they would otherwise read only in translation.

For those students who take the "Japanese track," a one hour weekly tutorial (in addition to the regular discussion session conducted in English) will be provided. The purpose of the tutorial is to provide help in the area of grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension of the Japanese texts. Study guides such as vocabulary lists, reading comprehension questions, and discussion questions will be provided. Through this approach, the learners will be able to acquire the content knowledge of Japanese linguistics and at the same time further develop Japanese academic language ability in the domain of linguistics.

A workshop on the JWPce (on-line dictionary and other kanji study tools) will be offered. If you need to learn these skills, you are more than welcome to attend the sessions on T & TH from 2:00-3:30 during the first week.

Since we are offering the "Japanese track" for the first time as an experiment, you will not receive extra credit on your transcript. However, we will issue a special certificate upon successful completion of the "Japanese track." Since this is a linguistic course, the grading is based solely on content mastery. There will be NO language related tests.

We believe by immersing yourself in actual Japanese academic texts, your reading habits will be reinforced. We hope you will take advantage of this exciting new approach and be part of our innovative language instruction.