Literacy is the ability of a person to understand what is going on in the world around them.  Literacy is crucial for people to be able to decode the words on signs that they see around town, to glean information from a pamphlet, or to enjoy a book.  Conversely, writing allows us to judge whether or not understanding has taken place and to what depth understanding has been assimilated.  Without the ability to write, some people would be without a means of communication entirely, while others use writing to shape the world around them, for example, by writing a persuasive letter to a congressperson.  But these are not the only forms of literacy.  There are a plethora of skills that people use daily that are part of the decoding of the world around them that include neither reading or writing.  An example of that can be seen with gestures common to a culture.  What is a sign meaning “peace” in America can be taken as a rude gesture in other parts of the world.  This is a form of cultural literacy.  People use literacy skills to decode the innumerable signals they receive from the world around them every day.  As educators, we must prepare our students to be able to successfully decode those signals and construct understanding before they can be expected to take their place in society and even before we can expect them to make the most possible out of their classroom experience. 

The integration of literacy into the content area of Japanese language B can support learning in a number of ways and I intend to use the practices of literacy instruction to better teach Japanese language.  In the following section, I will go into detail regarding two of the techniques I intend to use. 

First, having students read and write at all strengthens their overall ability, “Practice makes perfect” as the old adage says.  As part of the Oregon foreign language standards, all students must be able to read and write the language they are studying at a certain level to be considered having met the requirements.  Thus, students are expected to spend some time in class writing in the target language.  This activity is good for literacy learning even in English, because it allows students to draw connections between the target language and English and strengthens the mental pathways used for both languages improving the productivity of any future use of said pathways.  To that end, I intend to engage through the process of written summation.  This is an activity where students use writing to summarize what they’ve learned from a past lesson either as a means of warming up for a coming lesson which simultaneously pulls the relevant mental files to the forefront of their minds or as a way of summarizing what they’ve learned from a lesson that is about to finish in which they prove ownership of the content by phrasing learning in their own words towards the end of students’ being able to use correct English to describe, in their own words, the learning they have internalized from a lesson they had the day before.  Additionally, when teaching new grammar forms, it is my intent to have assessed assignments where students practice writing sentences in the target grammar.  This will help students to write and understand such sentences in the target language, but will also help them draw connections to English grammar and aid them in the future writing of similar sentences in English.

Second, I intend to use the DRTA literacy teaching technique in order to improve student access to scripts written in the target language.  Especially at low levels, students, when presented with a script written in Japanese, will panic even if the script uses only information they’ve studied simply because it appears to them as a massive wall of strange text that strikes them immediately as insurmountable.  I intend to use DRTA to help them overcome that initial feeling of ineptitude and begin to draw valuable information out of the text.  The goal of this activity will be to help the students come to a place where they are able to answer simple questions about smaller portions of the text that they may begin to understand the larger text.  I intend to do this as bellwork (unassessed work students do at their desks after they come into class but before and just after the bell rings to help them focus on the coming class).  During my practicum I will teach a conversation based unit where students will use a pre-defined conversation, making small changes, in order to practice and internalize the process for discussing item price while shopping in Japan.  At the beginning of the day, as the students file in, I will have them take out a piece of paper and answer these questions:  “Who are the people involved in this conversation?”, “Where are they?”, “Who is using polite Japanese?”, “Who is using less polite Japanese?”, “What do you think is happening or will happen?”, and “What do you think they are saying?”  I will have students answer by writing their answers in the form of complete sentences on their piece of paper and later, I will collect the papers.  The assignment will be unassessed, but saying that I’m going to collect the papers lets the students know that I am taking the assignment seriously and that they should as well.  This activity will not only offer the students additional practice writing in English, but will also offer practice in using the DRTA process to access written texts and in reading Japanese, giving the students the opportunity to strengthen mental pathways connected to reading, reading language B, and writing in language A and B.

Whether it is reading to practice the decoding of information specific to a foreign culture or writing to practice the more complex process of encoding in a target language, literacy is critical for both language A and language B learning.  It is therefore essential that any language B class involve the development of literacy and it is my intent to offer students the change to excel at both, putting them in an optimal position for success.