teaching japanese to children

[oxthowe]

My friend's son is eight years old, and I've recently begun teaching him Japanese, since it's easier to become bilingual from a younger age. However, he's rather...hyperactive and gets bored easily. Anyone know any good games that could help with teaching?

[Cosmo]

Have you tried shiritori ? It's a popular word game in Japan.

An example ? usagi (rabbit) - giri (duty) - risu (squirrel) - sugoi (wonderful) - ike (pond) - kemono (beast) - nousagi (hare)...

Could be a funny way to teach some new vocabulary and check the right spellings ! Actually, there's a French nursery rhyme based on a similar principle, but as far as I know this game has no other name than "shiritori"...

[Thomas Froehling]

Sounds like a good game for advanced pupils, but beginners will shortly run out of words (lack of vocabulary), which would only add to frustration and boredom.

What about using cards with pictures on the front and the Japanese word plus pronounciation on the back? Of course, you'll need some material and preparation for that (maybe that material is available for purchase), but the system is quite simple: First you've got three boxes, two empty and one with your word cards. You can either draw cards randomly or back to front or front to back, it doesn't matter. Recognised word cards go into the second box (Let's call it first level box), while the others go back into the full box. After some sessions of leafing through the first box (Zero level box), you should have at least some cards in the first level box. Then you could draw randomly from zero and first level, but remember where that card came from: recognised zero level cards go to first level as usual, but recognised first level cards go to the third box (Second level box).

You can spice that system with little extra rewards (candy bars for every five cards in first level, permission to read an issue of Usagi for 10 cards in second level, a trip to SDCC for empty zero and first level boxes....everything you see fit ), but the main source of motivation for pupils is the visual progress: they can actually see the words they know and how many they still know after some time (assuming, of course, they keep up the spirit ).

Another advantage is: pupils can use that system themselves whenever they want.

If you choose to spice it as described, you may want to check for cheating, though... .

Hoping to be of service....

[Cosmo]

Sounds like a good game for advanced pupils, but beginners will shortly run out of words (lack of vocabulary), which would only add to frustration and boredom.

I don't think so. Japanese is a syllabic language and there's less than 50 different syllables, so it's quite easy to find new words that fit. Especially if you omit the diacritics (dakuten and handakuten ゙ ゚). After only two months of Japanese, I could play shiritori with the very few vocabulary I had (anata - takai - imasu - suteki - kimono - nomu...)

There's no need to prolongate the game for hours, especially if your pupil gets bored so easily.

But one question, Oxthowe : Is it your friend's son who wants to learn Japanese, or is it you or your friend who want to teach him the language (whatever the reason) ?

In the first case, be sure it's not just a whim. In the second case, be very careful that those lessons don't become a real chore for him. You wouldn't like put him off everything that's Japanese.

Have you had a serious discussion about it ? As you may know, Japanese is a very hard language and is not to be taken lightly. Especially when it's about teaching an 8-years-old little scamp.

[oxthowe]

It's been two months since my last (and only) post. I apologize for the wait.

I liked a lot of the suggestions you guys had. The card game sounds great, but I don't really like the idea of a reward system. I was teaching him hiragana at first, so he didn't know enough words to play a decent round of shiritori. We did make flash cards (emphasis on the we) of hiragana and played "Memory" with them, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

Unfortunately, school started up for both of us (he's in 2nd grade and I attend a junior college), and our scedules make it hard for us to meet for lessons.

To answer your question Cosmo, I had the same concerns you did when I came up with the idea. I asked the kid's mom about it, and she thought it sounded good. We asked him if he wanted to learn Japanese, to which he replied that he did. After a few lessons, I started to notice how bored he got. I later asked him if he really wanted to learn Japanese, and he assured me that he really did.

[ellahrairah]

These are techniques I used to teach hyperactive japanese kids english, so I suppose it may be reversed engineered...
This may be good for teaching any Kana or Kanji... learning only Romanji will only confuse things later in the process in my experience... but try getting similar looking kanji on small white boards and give the kid an eraser and have him erase the correct character.. this was actually developed by me to teach 2 year olds how to recognize letters and shapes in english.. never give a 2 year old a sharpie by the way...

another one is to make several small copies of related vocabulary, i used it for the weather... and ask them to take the copy... say it, and then crumple it in a ball and throw it across the room. The kiddies love that one... do it repeatedly until you have a good smattering of vocabulary out there littering the floor, and then say the vocabulary and have them scurry to find the picture the word fits, and say it back to you... I did this once with about 150 elementary school japanese kids... beware of Kancho!!!

hope these couple work for you

[oxthowe]

Hey, thanks a lot! Those sound really great. He plays soccer and baseball, so he's a big fan of running after things. His mom might not like him running across the living room, so we'll probably have to do it in the backyard. Winter break's coming up in about a month, so hopefully we can pick up where we left off.

[estee]

Maybe you should start with the Japanese swear words to get his attention.

Are there Japanese swear words?

[ellahrairah]

of course there are swear words... but nothing as bad as what English can throw out

[estee]

Oh do tell!

Nothing like telling somebody off in an another language.

[ellahrairah]

My wife is Japanese, and I can say with a devlish grin, that I love talking in Japanese when we are in public, because we do nothing but talk smack about others. While we dont usually curse them out, we will talk about other things...
for acceptable bad words... the most frequently used is aho or baka... which translates loosely as idiot.... baka, depending on tone can be more playful, but aho i have never heard used playfully.

by the way... dont teach the kids that... although they would remember it I imagine.

[Jet_Jaguar]

In most of the Japanese movies I watch, someone usually says something that sounds like "Kissuah!" and it typically gets translated as "damn!" or "damn it!" What's the transliteration of this word? I think it's a pretty good all-purpose expression of irritation.

I can remember reading that part of the reason that Japanese really doesn't have profanity the way that English speakers understand (i.e. words considered profane because they're related to bodily functions that aren't discussed in a polite setting) it is that talking about bodily functions doesn't carry the same taboo in Japan that it does in America or other Western countries. How accurate is that? Would it be accurate to say that Japan never developed the same Manichean "spirit good/ body and matter bad" duality that developed in the West? (Forgive me if I'm taking this thread in a weird direction!)

[ellahrairah]

the word your looking for is actually "chikusho" but when pronounced in a slangy way, can sound like that. As far as bodily functions, japanese has things like that but to be honest, it has such an ugly image, that I have never really heard anyone use it. I think its more from the domain of the underworld, so I dont think there is any philisophical reason for it. I asked my wife if Chikusho actually had a meaning... kind of like our curse words have some root that we can easily pin down. She gave me the english translation and said it really doesnt mean anything other than to express frustration... and its enough for your mama to smack you (if they were american mothers at least) but not enough to be edited out of TV.

Its hard to explain how bad language works in Japan, because it effects the entire grammatical structure. I almost didnt meet my wife because I introduced myself in a scary way... not that I thumped my chest and declared who I was.. I just used what I thought was casual man talk... All it was was I said..."Ore ha martin da" (my name is martin) as opposed to something a little more toned down "Boku ha martin desu" or "watashi ha martin desu" all of those say "my name is martin" but the grammer and vocabulary is somewhat different and so carry a different image...

the long answer to a simpler question....