JAPANESE LANGUAGE 1 (II)

This course falls within the characterising teachings of the second year of the "Japan" curriculum of the Master's degree program in Language and Civilisation of Asia and Mediterranean Africa.
Its formative objectives fall within the area of language skills learning.

The objectives of the course are:

- to provide knowledge of intermediate high level and advanced level of Japanese grammar;
- to provide intermediate high level skills for reading, writing and oral production in Japanese;
- to provide knowledge and skills for the metalinguistic analysis of the Japanese language and for the translation from Japanese into Italian;
- to provide knowledge on the use of tools for the observation and the description of authentic linguistic materials.

The level that students should reach at the end of the course should be around an B2+ level of the CEFR (around level N2 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test).
This class is part of the Japanese language program; it builds on the skills acquired in the "Japanese language 1.1" classes and prepares the students to continue with "Japanese language 2" in their second year.

1. Knowledge and understanding

- to complete the knowledge of the grammatical structures of upper intermediate and advanced level of Japanese language;
- to complete the knowledge of upper intermediate level writing system (kana and kanji) and vocabulary;
- to know and understand the functioning of the grammatical structures of upper intermediate and advanced level of Japanese;
- to know and understand variations in the register and communication pragmatics of upper intermediate level of Japanese;
- to know and understand key concepts and the essential terminology required to describe in a scientific way the phenomena studied during the class;
- develop fast reading skills (especially with regards to academic papers and articles in Japanese).

2. Applying knowledge and understanding:

- to know how to identify grammatical categories and their properties;
- to demonstrate a general understanding of upper intermediate and advanced level grammar structures;
- to be able to describe constructions and grammatical phenomena studied during classes by correctly using the terminology and the basic tools of morphosyntactic analysis;
- to know how to interact in the communicative situations described by the B2+ level of the CEFR;
- to know how to understand and produce oral and written texts in agreement with the B2+ level of the CEFR;
- to be able to translate upper intermediate written texts from Japanese into Italian, following the instructions provided during the course.

3. Making judgements:

- to understand principal ideas of complex texts on both concrete and abstract themes and to speak about concepts related to their field of research;
- to be able to produce a clear and detailed text on a various spectrum of subjects and explain a point of view producing examples to support or refute them in Japanese;
- to be able to autonomously produce translation choices on the basis of the indications provided during class, dispensing with current myths and prejudices about the Japanese language (e. g. presumed untranslatability, opacity, etc.);
- to be able to use written corpora for the quantitive and qualitative analysis of morphosyntactic structures.

4. Communication:

- written and oral comprehension and production skills and oral interaction required by the B2+ level of the CEFR;
- to be able, during classes, to interact with one's peers, with the teacher and with the CELs in a critical and respectful way;
- deliver presentation in Japanese about a topic chosen by the student.

5. Lifelong learning skills:

- to be able to consult the texts and reference materials suggested in the course bibliography.
- to be able to develop the skills acquired in the course to undertake higher studies.

Having achieved (even without having passed its test) the learning results of the "Japanese language 1.1" class. Knowledge of the basic categories of sentence analysis.

The course includes a 30-hour course given by the lecturer and 180 hours of language exercises given by the Foreign Language Assistants (CEL).

Lecturer's course (30 hours: Giuseppe Pappalardo)

Metalinguistic analysis of the Japanese language (Sector-specific languages of social, political, economic and legal fields) through written and oral corpora

Students will be guided in the use of primary sources in Japanese language to develop original research on lexical, morphological, syntactic, textual, and pragmatic phenomena, including diachronic perspectives. The methodology is that of corpus linguistics: students will use large written and oral corpora, such as the BCCWJ (The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese), but also other corpora that can be consulted through the Chunagon search engine, to autonomously extract concordances on the lexical and morphosyntactic structures under investigation, thereby deriving both quantitative and qualitative information on linguistic variation. Students' capacity for observation, metalinguistic reflection and construction of rules of usage will be stimulated. Students will become familiar with new tools for observing and processing linguistic data and develop a greater sensitivity to the relationship between systemic and contextual variation. Translation of concordances will complete the analysis of the morphosyntactic structures under consideration.

Foreign Language Assistants exercises (180 hours)

MOD. 2A Grammar and writing exercises on the manual (60 hours);
MOD. 2B Written and oral comprehension (30 hours);
MOD. 2C Oral production (express one's opinion on the content of written texts) (30 hours);
MOD. 2D Written production (reading and summary of written texts) (30 hours);
MOD. 2E Free conversation (30 hours)

Attendance, although not compulsory, is strongly recommended.

COMPULSORY READINGS:

1)Textbook: Bunka Chukyu Nihongo, vol. 2, Tokyo, Bonjinsha, 2012 (Unit 5-8)
2) ALL THE MATERIAL (excerpts, slides of the course ecc.) uploaded on the Moodle by teachers during the course.

CORPORA TO BE CONSULTED THROUGH CHUNAGON (registration required: https://chunagon.ninjal.ac.jp/ ):

- The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ): https://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/corpus_center/bccwj/en/
- Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ): https://clrd.ninjal.ac.jp/csj/en/index.html
- Corpus of Everyday Japanese Conversation (CEJC): https://www2.ninjal.ac.jp/conversation/cejc.html
- Showa Speech Corpus (SSC): https://www2.ninjal.ac.jp/conversation/showaCorpus/
- Nagoya University Conversation Corpus (NUCC): https://mmsrv.ninjal.ac.jp/nucc/
- Corpus of Workplace Conversation (CWPC): https://www2.ninjal.ac.jp/conversation/shokuba.html
- Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ): https://clrd.ninjal.ac.jp/chj/
- Showa-Heisei Corpus of written Japanese (SHC): https://clrd.ninjal.ac.jp/shc/
- Corpus of Japanese Dialects (COJADS): https://www2.ninjal.ac.jp/cojads/index.html
- International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Language (I-JAS): https://www2.ninjal.ac.jp/jll/lsaj/ihome2.html

SUGGESTED READINGS (only for reference):

- Sunakawa Yuriko et al., Kyōshi to gakushūsha no tame no nihongo bunkei jiten. Kuroshio shuppan 1998
- Makino Tsutsui, A dictionary of Intermediate Japanese grammar. The Japan Times 1995
- Makino Tsutsui, A dictionary of Advanced Japanese grammar. The Japan Times 2008
- Aston, Guy (a cura di), Learning with corpora, Bologna, CLUEB 2001
- Burnard Lou, McEnery Tony, Rethinking Language Pedagogy from a Corpus Perspective, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2000
- McEnery Tony, Wilson Andrew, Corpus Linguistics. An Introduction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press1996
- Sinclair John (a cura di) How to use Corpora in Language Teaching, Amsterdam, John Benjamins.

Suggested electronic dictionary:

- model CASIO “XD-Z7400" (https://casio.jp/exword/products/XD-Z7400/ ) or older model from the series 7400 (ITA-JAP, JAP-ITA dictionary included; classical Japanese dictionary not included.)

or

- model Casio “XD-SX4800" (https://casio.jp/exword/products/XD-SX4800/ ) or older from the series 4800 (classical Japanese dictionary included; ITA-JAP, JAP-ITA dictionary not included. An XS-SH17MC content card is required).

The exam is divided into three sections: a paper, a written test and an oral test.

POWER POINT ORAL PRESENTATION (MAX 10 MINUTES)

The student will present an original research work on the quantitative and/or qualitative analysis of one or more lexical or morphosyntactic structures (lexical bundles, syntagmatic phenomena, idiomatic expressions, collocations) through written and/or oral corpora (ideally sectorial languages of social, political, economic and legal fields), accompanied by the translation of the extracted concordances.

WRITTEN TEST

1. Written test of kanji (taken from honbun readings: 5-1, 5-2, 6-1, 6-2, 7-1, 7-2, 8-1, 8-2) and grammar (based on honbun, bunkei-hyōgen, fukushi, setsuzokushi, giongo-gitaigo (p.159), settōgo-setsubigo (p.213) of the units 5– 8) without dictionary - 30 min; Reference: ‘BUNKA CHŪKYŪ NIHONGO II – MATOME’, ‘Esercizi 1mod 2’, ‘Esercizi fukushi’, and other material on Moodle.

2. Written composition (summarising a new text in Japanese with the aid of a dictionary) - 50 min;

ORAL TEST

1. Reading and comprehension from the textbook Bunka Chūkyū Nihongo II (L.5~L.8). Reading and comprehension in Japanese of honbun texts: 5-2, 6-1, 7-1, 7-2 (opinions on text 7-2), 8-1, 8-2; presentation on a historical character chosen by the student. Please refer to the 発表原稿 e 内容メモ → See file ‘1 mod.2 Attività’ on Moodle (Nakayama Etsuko).

2. Conversation, reading, and comprehension of texts studied in class. (Suzuki Masako).

The final grade will be determined by the average of the marks in thirtieths achieved in the three parts that make up the exam (presentation; written test; oral test). The 12 cfu associated with the teaching will be obtained after passing the written and oral test in the same session. Successful completion of the presentation will be valid for one academic year: if the exam is not completed by the January 2025 session, it will be necessary to retake the entire exam.

Seminar activities on theoretical grammar through the use of written corpora.
Conversation and oral production and comprehension exercises in Japanese.
Learning tools and other materials (course slides, grammar insights etc.) on the moodle platform.

Italian

Registration (free of charge) in Chunagon is required: https://chunagon.ninjal.ac.jp/

A system of tutors will be provided. It is warmly suggested to apply for it in case of difficulties in following the program.

written and oral