Development of Teaching Method of Japanese Conversation for Research Students

摘要本研究旨在探讨大学研究生日语会话教学方法。他们有自己特殊的研究领域，与同事或朋友主要使用英语的特点。作为语言学习者，他们更喜欢以演绎为导向的学习和获取显性知识。因此，我们采取了一种“认知方法”来进行会话教学，以扩展他们的口语能力，并强调会话（或语法）表达的意图或效果：他们可以表达什么，或者他们的语言或非语言行为向他人表达了什么。我们试图让学习者意识到“构建语篇的过程”，并获得构建语篇的各种技巧（如开始对话，改变话题等），以及反映某些元素的意义（如情态，结束助词等）。基于同样的概念，我们还创建了其他任务，“最小对话”用于理解日语的“高语境性质”（Hall 1977），“随意对话”用于理解日语的各种说话风格，“电话对话”用于使用交际策略获取信息，“语法进一步练习”作为语法使用的研讨会。这使学习者能够掌握项目的基本含义，并研究如何将它们应用到学习者的实际生活情境中。

The aim of this study is to develop teaching method of Japanese conversations for research students at university. They have their own special fields of research and features of using mostly English with their colleagues or friends. As learners of language, they prefer deductive-oriented learning and obtaining explicit knowledge.So, we took a kind of "cognitive approach" for teaching conversation to extend their speaking ability, and put emphasis on intentions or effects of conversational (or grammatical) expressions: what they can express or what are expressed with their verbal or non verbal behaviors to other people.We tried to make learners to be conscious to "discourse-constructing process" and to acquire various skills of constructing discourse (e. g. starting a conversation, changing a topic etc.), and to reflect meaning of some elements (e. g. modality, ending particles etc.). We also created other tasks, based on the same concept, "Minimal Conversations" for understanding "high-context nature (Hall 1977) of Japanese, "Casual Conversations" for understanding various speaking styles of Japanese, "Telephone Conversations" for getting information using communicative strategies, and "Further Practice on Grammar" as a kind of workshop of usage of grammar, which enables learners to grasp essential meanings of items and to examine how to apply them to learners real life context.