Grade 12 - Communicating

This sub-organizer contains the following sections:
Prescribed Learning Outcomes
Suggested Instructional Strategies
Suggested Assessment Strategies
Recommended Learning Resources

PRESCRIBED LEARNING OUTCOMES

It is expected that students will:

exchange detailed information on familiar topics and interests using specified kanji (see Appendix A)
express plans, goals, and intentions
give information and reasons to support points of view on various topics
interact in a range of social and learning contexts

To view the prescribed learning outcomes for Communicating in other grades click on an icon below.

SUGGESTED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

Students engage in increasingly complex and spontaneous oral interactions based on common situations. Communication and risk taking continue to be more important than accuracy in most situations. Students write longer and more complex compositions using acquired sentence patterns and kanji .

Ask students to bring to class pictures of gifts they would like and to display them. Have them describe on index cards the gifts' sizes, shapes, and colours, and the occasions for which they are intended. Collect, shuffle, and redistribute the cards. Ask students to identify the correct pictures based on the information on the index cards. Students use the pattern: _____________ o moraimashita . The creators of the cards then announce: _____________ san ni _____________ o agemashita.
Provide students in pairs with sets of pictures of Japanese city scenes and ask them to infer what is happening in each, using the pattern: _____________to omoimasu.
Have students relate events they have heard about, using the pattern: _____________ to kiku .
Have students brainstorm current issues or events that interest them. Encourage them to participate in discussions or informal debates on some of these issues, giving reasons and information to support their points of view.
Suggest that students interview one another about their families and prepare page-long summaries using kanji . Summaries could include family members' occupations, interests, skills, special qualities, and roles. Ask students to collate the pages to form a class book to be exchanged with another Japanese class. Assign students to write letters introducing the book, using the proper Japanese letter format.
Invite students in pairs to role-play situations involving an exchange of information (e.g., a tourist getting lost and asking for directions, a student arriving at the home of a host family).

SUGGESTED ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES

In Grade 12, students are expected to demonstrate their communication strategies and their facility with Japanese in an increasing variety of situations. Meaning continues to be the most important feature of their written and oral communication; however, assessment should also provide feedback about errors (especially in sentence patterns and kanji ) that detract from the effectiveness of the communications.

When students present information to the class, consider the extent to which they are able to:
- speak from notes rather than prepared texts
- make information comprehensible
- summarize key points and include relevant details
- use appropriate vocabulary and structures
- organize information and time sequences clearly (e.g., use transitions and appropriate verb forms)
- avoid serious errors in tense and structure that obscure meaning
To assess students' participation and effectiveness in classroom discussions, look for evidence of the extent to which they:
- take positions and make their views clear
- give reasons to support their views
- listen actively and attempt to respond or build on others' ideas
- participate in the discussions with some degree of spontaneity and engagement
When students write letters, focus on:
- clarity and appropriateness of the messages
- amount and relevance of the detail they include
- use of appropriate Japanese, ritualized expressions of greetings, thanks, closings, and idiomatic expressions
- variety of linguistic patterns and appropriateness of vocabulary
- clear organization of information and time sequences
- accuracy of word choice, word order, tense, and structure

RECOMMENDED LEARNING RESOURCES

Print Materials

250 Essential Kanji for Everyday Use
501 Japanese Verbs
Active Japanese 5 and 6
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
Easy Katakana
Effective Japanese Usage Guide
Everyday Japanese
A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese (Revised Edition)
A Homestay in Japan
In Japan
Japanese for Everyone
Kanji and Kana
Mangajin's Basic Japanese Through Comics
Nihongo: First Lessons in Kanji
Nihongo Notes 1
Yookoso!

Multimedia

101 Japanese Idioms
Japanese Language and People
Moshi Moshi
Pera Pera

Software

KanjiWord
Kcom2
Power Japanese

CD-ROM

Dynamic Japanese
Exotic Japan
Multimedia Kanji Learning System

Revised: January 26, 1999

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