JapanesePod101.com offers a wide range of podcasts and videos that can help students review what they have learned in class or learn new material independently. The site offers some content for free, but some can only be accessed by paying a membership fee. Teachers could also make use of the...
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Resource: Erin’s Challenge
Erin’s Challenge is a comprehensive resource designed by the Japan Foundation. There are a collection of videos that cover a wide range of situations in Japan and there are many resources to go with the videos. Four different kinds of subtitles can be shown for each video (normal Japanese, hiragana,...
Continue reading...Resource: Hiragana Times
Hiragana Times is a magazine that is designed for students of Japanese. The articles are written in Japanese, but the text has been modified to be slightly easier for students to read. The kanji characters are all given furigana so students can look up the meaning of the words easily....
Continue reading...Resource: Article about Whaling
In Stage 4: Moving Between Cultures, one of the outcomes is: “A student demonstrates knowledge of key features of the culture of Japanese speaking communities”. Students learn about “representations of the culture of Japanese speaking communities in text, film and mass media” and students learn to “identify generalisations about people...
Continue reading...Resource: The Ainu Museum
In Stage 4: Moving Between Cultures, one of the outcomes is: “A student demonstrates knowledge of key features of the culture of Japanese speaking communities”. Students learn about “the importance of tradition to a sense of cultural identity and diversity within the culture” and students learn to “identify and explain...
Continue reading...Network: The Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language
(日本語教育学会) This organization promotes the learning of Japanese as a foreign language. It offers materials, research, lectures, journals, tests, and networking opportunities. Link: http://www.nkg.or.jp/
Continue reading...Network: Sensei Online
This is a mailing list for teachers of Japanese who use (or who want to use) digital resources in their classes. The list has been in existence since 1999 and is very active. Link: http://www.sabotenweb.com/bookmarks/about/senseiOnline.html
Continue reading...Resources: Rikai
Rikai can be used to help students read Japanese web content. It lets the user scroll over words that are written in kanji and learn how to read them and what the meaning might be. This is especially good for intermediate learners who are not quite ready to read on...
Continue reading...Resource: Kanji Learner’s Dictionary
This dictionary can be used by Japanese learners of any level to look up kanji characters. The dictionary offers a special system for looking up characters that can be used by novices. It can be paired with the Kanji Proficiency Test materials to allow students to learn characters independently or...
Continue reading...Resource: Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC
Dictionaries are an important tool when learning any language, but Japanese dictionaries can be extremely difficult for novices to use. Jim Breen has creating a number of dictionaries that are particularly useful to non-native learners of Japanese. They allow access to words through romaji (important when learners don’t have a...
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