Stage 1 Japanese Beginners

About the subject

This is a subject for students with little or no previous knowledge of Japanese. Students who learn Japanese at Middle Schools are not eligible for this course. Students therefore need to give evidence to support this condition and must sign an eligibility form to this effect.

Students develop their ability to communicate and interact in a variety of contexts for a range of purposes, within and across languages and cultures.

Students develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and use information and communication technologies, to create and engage effectively with a range of spoken, written, and multimodal texts in Japanese.

At beginners level, students develop and apply linguistic and intercultural knowledge, understanding, and skills by:

• interacting with others in Japanese in interpersonal situations
• creating texts in Japanese for specific audiences, purposes, and contexts
• analysing texts that are in Japanese to interpret meaning
• comparing languages and how they work as a system
• reflecting on the ways in which culture is created, expressed, and communicated through language.

Students explore the three interconnected themes of Relationships, Lifestyles, and Experiences from the perspectives of ‘The Personal World’ and ‘The Japanese speaking Communities’.

A bilingual dictionary (Japanese to English, English to Japanese) is highly recommended.

Assessment

Students will undertake 5 assessment tasks from the following 3 assessment types:

• Type 1: Interaction (Individual or in pairs)
• Type 2: Text Production (Creative Writing)
• Type 3: Text Analysis (Read texts in Japanese and answer questions in either English or Japanese as required)