Dear readers,
My name is Federica Tocci and I am the coordinator of the project “A Multidimensional Website Project to Improve Japanese Language and IT Skills – Collaborative Creativity in Response to COVID-19” carried out at the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, sponsored by The Japan Foundation. In these challenging times, we found ourselves working on this project that has been designed as a means to foster and support Japanese language students as a response to the lack of stimuli and the time of uncertainty which are currently affecting higher education due to Covid pandemic.
The project is conducted by Associate Professor Marcella M. Mariotti, experienced scholar in Japanese Language Education (JLE), former Chairperson of the Japanese Language Teachers Association in Europe (AJE), awarded in 2019 by the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs for connecting academia and employment through placement tutoring at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she has been in charge since 2010.
The project took its start from the Departmental e-Learning platforms for Japanese language:
JaLea started in 2008 as BunpoHyDict, a Hypermedia Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. In 2016, thanks to Mitsubishi Corporation funds, was completely rebuilt and it still is nowaday an innovative web tool for the acquisition of the Japanese language dedicated to higher education learners. It highlights the innovative learner-centered approach through a self-guided discovery of grammar structures and words’ meanings combined to the use of realia (multimedia contents referring to real-life situations in Japan), hyperlinks and interactive features such as pop-up dictionary, character-writing explanations, slow-motion option in video examples, etc.
Jalea Business, a hypermedia web application to learn Business Japanese, business etiquette, e-mail and CV writing skills (funded by Mitsubishi Corporation, 2018) and the online free Japanese-Italian dictionary a4edu, derived from the ITADICT project started in 2011, following the Fukushima disaster.
The three projects are intertwined, to study grammar as well as Business Japanese, using a Japanese-Italian pop-up dictionary and authentic materials only. Jalea, Jalea Business and a4edu are an extremely precious job-training field for present students, and especially for those who will be the future Japanese teaching staff.
Starting from September 2020, dual teaching (simultaneous in-class and online) has been introduced at Ca’ Foscari University in order to support a gradual recovery of educational practices; however, Japanese language students and newly graduates still struggle: they currently have little possibility to apply for internship programs both in Italy and Japan due to the decline in employment rate and border restrictions; most importantly, they are facing difficulties in finding renovated motivation to commit to the new learning methods.
Collaborative Creativity 2021 consists of a special multidimensional internship program, involving adjunct professors, newly graduates, graduate and undergraduate students in Japanese language curricula to further implement the online platforms dedicated to Japanese language teaching and learning. Surely both professors and students will benefit from this project and I would like to write about future developments in my next posts.
Stay tuned!
Federica
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