This presentation describes extensive reading and extensive listening/viewing activities in Japanese language courses at a United States university. The presenter will discuss the significance of various inputs in language courses, and how they can elicit learners’ autonomous learning.
This presentation describes extensive reading and extensive listening/viewing activities in Japanese courses at a United States university. Krashen (2014) claims that Compelling Comprehensible Input is necessary for the path to highest language levels of language competence and full development of literacy. As an instructor who has been offering stand-alone Japanese extensive reading courses since 2014, the significance of input has become clear to this author. According to learners' self-evaluations, extensive reading is effective for their language acquisition, especially on reading speed and vocabulary, as well as cultural understanding. In addition, extensive reading can elicit learners' autonomy and increase their motivation for various activities, such as project presentations and out-of-class self-readings.
Based on the above experience, the author started to increase the other input, listening, in the program. She has introduced extensive listening/viewing activities into regular Japanese courses in 2018, to all Japanese learners enrolled at every level from beginning to advanced. Over 60 learners completed the out-of-class assignments reflecting this approach several times through the academic year. They were asked to select their own listening materials for their pleasure, including those with visual content. Materials reflect a broad range of genres, such as music, movie, anime, TV show, documentary, radio program, and so forth. The length of the material is determined by the student's choice, and the learners may or may not use subtitles. According to questionnaires given afterward, many learners gained confidence while enjoying the assignments, and beginning level learners tend to feel their improvement on vocabulary building and listening skill.
Although recently there have been more reports on extensive reading in Japanese, those on extensive listening/viewing are rare. Similar to extensive reading, learners pursue self-directed language approach through extensive listening/viewing, which clearly lead them to become true autonomous and life-long learners.
