Development of program and teaching materials for cross-cultural understanding using works of visual novels

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(1) Research: We analyzed some representative textbooks and references in English and in Chinese and found that their descriptions of the stylistic features of Japanese such as levels, gender-markers and honorific forms are so limited to general baselines and totally ignore strategic usages by the speaker observed in works of story-manga. This may well have led the learners to their common misunderstanding and difficulties in interpreting the speaker's intention. Also, we analyzed real spontaneous conversations between young male and female students and found that the strategic usages are seen in real conversations as well as in works of story-manga and novels(2) Production of the guide for teachers: We provided the answers and detailed explanations about theoretical backgrounds for each task and question in one of the textbooks we had produced based on story-manga: "Learning Japan and Japanese through story-manga 1: Working Women Today".(3) Publications of the results: We published three papers, gave a lecture at three academic conferences in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. We also complied a report that includes major papers we published in 2005-7, handouts of the lecture, and teaching materials and the guide for teachers mentioned in (2).