Statement from Matt Burdelski:
I am thrilled and honored to be a recipient of the 4th Annual
JLSF scholarship. I am looking forward to going to Japan in the
summer of 2003 to: 1) further explore Japanese language education
and teacher training and 2) collect videotaped data of interaction
in the home. Over the past few years, I have become interested
in the intersection of discourse and the
teaching of Japanese as a foreign (and second) language . The
questions that motivate me are: How are Japanese language teachers
and novice language teacher educators in Japan trained through
discourse practices? For example, as a teaching assistant at
a Japanese university for a course titled "Japanese language
education practicum" (nihongo kyooiku jisshuu), I came to
realize that keeping a written journal and talking about it with
a supervisor and other teaching assistants during weekly meetings
was an important discourse practice that contributed to the socialization
of teaching assistants as novice teacher educators. In addition
to my interest in teacher training, I believe there is a great
deal to be learned about foreign and second language pedagogy
from recording and analyzing naturally occurring interaction in
the home between parents and children.