Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| Language: | en |
| Published: |
1969
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED030866 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
Table of Contents:
- Written Japanese for Students of Chinese. McCoy, John Advanced Students Chinese Contrastive Linguistics Instructional Materials Japanese Language Instruction Language Learning Levels Reading Programs Reading Skills Research Tools Written Language Since a reading knowledge of Japanese is an indispensable research tool for advanced work in Chinese studies, the student of Chinese is faced with the task of "developing a facility in two of the most difficult written languages of the world." With the goal of making this task as easy as possible, a course has been developed at Cornell University to teach written Japanese to students with a reading knowledge of Chinese. The course is based on the assumption that these students need only a passive command of the written language for library research, not audio-lingual training. The techniques of contrastive linguistic analysis are especially useful in training students for this skill. In the Cornell class, the first week is devoted to maximum exposure to pure kana writing, allowing the students to "go as far and as fast as possible." In the second week, mixed kana-character texts are introduced, gradually increasing in difficulty. The students are not asked to provide exact English translations but rather to visualize English words in the Japanese sentence order. The class moves as fast as the students can absorb the material; they begin to read actual newspaper and scholarly articles at the middle of the second semester. By the end of the course the student should be able to proceed on his own. The texts used in the course are discussed and evaluated in this article. (JD)