Abstract:

A national university in Japan is promoting innovative elementary Japanese language classes by providing students for whom Japanese is not native language with audiovisual materials for vocabulary study. For these classes, language teachers created a series of online videos that included visual images, audio and captions. Before classes, students watched videos as homework to preview target vocabulary items and at the beginning of classes, students had vocabulary quizzes based on the videos. Having students preview target vocabulary before they attended classes allowed more class time to encourage student output through activities such as conversation practice or presentations. To evaluate the effectiveness of classes, feedback was obtained by questionnaires and interviews of teachers and students. Feedback indicates that the innovative method benefits students and teachers of Japanese language due to more efficient use of class time.

Keywords:

Active Learning, Flipped Classroom.