About The Program

In 1995, Patrick Henry Preparatory School in East Harlem became the first elementary school in the New York City Public School system to offer a Japanese language program to its students.  I was hired to develop an age-appropriate curriculum and teach it to approximately 210 Kindergarten and first-graders.

In the 1996-97 school year, the program expanded to about 300 Kindergarten, first and second-graders.  Now, in the 1997-98 year, I teach about 280 of our first, second and third graders.  A second Japanese teacher who joined our staff in December 1997 has been teaching our three Kindergarten classes.  A third Japanese teacher has recently begun teaching two PreK classes and one additional second grade class.

(Program Update: It is now Spring 1999; the Japanese program is in its 4th year.  The two part-time teachers who joined us in the 3rd year have left for full-time jobs elsewhere.  (SIGH!)  I am teaching 17 classes this year.  One class each at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade levels continue to see me three times per week.  Eight other 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade classes as well as five PreK and Kindergarten classes see me once or twice a week.  One 3rd grade and one 4th grade have been dropped from the program.  We are looking for funding and hope to be able to hire a second full-time teacher for the 1999-2000 school year.  If you can provide the funding or if you are a Japanese teacher who is looking for a job for September 1999, why not send me a note?  To send a message, click here.)

About This Booklet

This booklet is a compilation of the “unit review sheets” that are sent home to parents every month or so.  These sheets keep parents informed about the material their child has been learning in Japanese class.  Parents are asked to support their child's learning by discussing the vocabulary and conversations with their child, and by encouraging their child to sing the songs at home.  A CD recording of the 66 songs accompanies this booklet.

This is not a children's textbook!  It is more like a parent's guide or teacher's manual.  Although it might be used with older beginners to supplement lessons learned in class, it is far too wordy and bland to appeal to the younger child (who probably cannot read it anyway.)

So, although the vocabulary, simple sentence structures and unit-related songs contained within the booklet  are appropriate for early elementary students, it is the teacher, by presenting age-appropriate activities in the classroom, who teaches the children to speak Japanese.

About The Teaching Methodology

I use a variety of skits, drills, puppetry, songs, “portfolio projects,” story books, videos and props in the classroom with the children.  I always try to find a balance between repetition--through which students become increasingly comfortable and confident with a familiar activity--and variety, so that students are not bored.  I try to use a multi-sensory approach and, for any given unit, I often have at over 20 different activities designed to teach or reinforce the same material, with the assumption that some activities will work better for some children than others.   For more information regarding these activities, e-mail your questions to me by clicking here or see the JESSi Activities Plus section of this web site.

About The Songs

Many of the songs on the CD are my own compositions.  Others are songs that I have modified by changing words and adding additional verses to enhance their educational value.  Still others are traditional Japanese children's songs or songs written by other Japanese teachers for the purpose of teaching the Japanese language.  I hope you will find these songs useful.  Please feel free to modify them further to meet the needs of your classroom.  I would enjoy hearing from you if you make any significant improvements on these songs, or if you have any other songs to share.

One More Thing

Something that I feel is rather unique about my curriculum is the way I introduce speech levels--the “polite/distal/desu-masu-tai” style and the “friendly/plain/direct/da-tai” style, which is such an important and distinctive aspect of the Japanese language.  I feel that most textbooks, for children as well as adults, fall short in this area.

Most textbooks teach the “polite” style first and then, many chapters later, introduce the “friendly” style.  That, in itself, would be fine except that: 1) the books usually do not tell you that this is what they have done until much later and 2) the books often encourage drill work and conversations between the students who, being friends and classmates, would not normally use a polite style of speech among themselves.
Other textbooks mention both styles at once but leave it to the discretion of the teacher which one to use--as if the decision is arbitrary or a matter of personal choice.
Still other textbooks choose to underplay the importance of this aspect of the Japanese language altogether.  Rather, they emphasize that “communication” is of primary importance and thereby imply that, “Get over here, now!” and, “Would you mind coming here for a moment, please” are equally acceptable in any given situation since they basically “communicate” the same thing.

In my curriculum, I introduce the concept of speech levels from the first unit.  Although the actual application of this concept is limited to aisatsu  (greetings and polite expressions) and noun-with-or-without-desu  structures,* I feel that this establishes from early on a sensitivity to a feature of the Japanese language that is often confusing to English-speaking students.

Since this is an area of particular interest for me, I welcome comments and opinions from my fellow teachers regarding this matter.

For more information, to share thoughts, comments, questions, and good ideas about teaching Japanese, or to purchase additional copies of this booklet and CD, please contact me at the address below or send e-mail by clicking here:

Roberta Young
Patrick Henry Preparatory School, P.S. 171
19 E. 103 Street
New York, NY  10029

May 1998

* For example, in the “Greetings” unit, the children play a game called “Birthday Party,” in which they use arigato  with each other but arigato gozaimasu  with their teacher.  In the “Animals” unit, children play a “Can You Find It?” game where they answer “Inu wa doko?”  with “Koko!”  with each other but use “Koko desu”  with me.
In the second year, speech-level related grammar such as noun-with-da,  “i-adjectives” with and without desu,  and  verbs in “polite” style are introduced.  My students have been introduced to verbs in “friendly” style in songs but they have not begun studying them yet.