Active from/to: 2022-23

Research Team: Prof. Marcella Mariotti (Scientific Coordinator), Chiara Alessandrini (Project Coordinator), Gaia Varone (Project Coordinator)

Project Facilitators: Gabriele Moriggi, Lara Pacini, Daria Fanara, Nicholas Ruggeri, Sara Piantella, Arisa Matsuda, Moe Tanno, Mitsuki Iwaki, Sanae Ohno

Project participants: 16 high school students from I.I.S. G. Bruno- R. Franchetti, Liceo Scientifico Ugo Morin (Mestre, Venezia), Liceo Scientifico Statale E. Fermi (Padova)

What is this project about?

PCTO is an acronym for “Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali ed Orientamento”, literally translating to “transversal skills and orientation pathways”. In high schools in Italy, they represent curricular activities for students to conjoin theoretical knowledge with practical experience, to facilitate their perspective choices with regard to their future career or studies.

Within this framework, the “Workshop esperienziale: Giapponese senza freni! (lit. Experiential workshop: Japanese with no brakes!)” project envisages high school students taking an active part in Japanese language learning by participating in weekly meetings with Ca’ Foscari University students, to create together a place for ‘dialogue in language’.

No previous knowledge of the Japanese language is required in order to participate.

The approach applied is the level-free NoLBrick (Prof. Mariotti), and the topics covered are chosen personally by the participating students. The activities also include an autonomous part of research and study of the language contents during which the students have the opportunity to develop skills related to the use of diverse online tools (such as the Cafoscari Jisho APP dictionary, search engines, Google Suite package) and to the reprocessing of relevant information.

The entire activity is conducted both in-person and via the Moodle platform, entirely in Japanese. The interactions are led by expert facilitators, training in Japanese language teaching, in parallel with Prof. Mariotti’s first semester course.

The aim of the project is for the students to succeed in expressing their own interests as discussed during the workshop, to learn how to recognise words Japanese in a sentence and to consult dictionaries of the language, collaborating with Ca’ Foscari University students.