AIRA held a lecture on Japanese language teaching so that the volunteer teachers’ skills may be upgraded. (No.22-7)

Date & Time: September 10th(Sat), 2022 13:30～15:30 online (Zoom)
Lecturer: Mr. SAITO Shigeru (an instructor at Bunri University of Hospitality, Reitaku University and Japanese Education Course of Human Academy Co. Ltd.)
Participants: 51 people (24 volunteer teachers and 3 staff members from AIRA, and 24 volunteers from other international relations associations (7 from Kashiwa, 7 from Matsudo, 1 from Noda, 3 from Nagareyama, 4 from Toride and 2 from Moriya )

The training lecture is held around twice a year for the volunteer teachers. This time, due to the Corona pandemic, it was held online from Civic Plaza and each participant joined zoom.
Emceed by Mr. MASHIKO in charge of organizing this lecture, it started with a short speech by Mr. Saruwatari, Director of AIRA Volunteer Services Department. He said that Japanese classes are getting more and more important for foreigners who want to study Japanese for daily life and emphasized how significant this lecture was.

The themes of the lecture were:
① Writing on a whiteboard for students’ easy understanding and the usage of Power Point
➁ How to prepare and teach, referring to an example of “~ NNDESU” (“Minna no Nihogo” Lesson 26)
③ The importance of the relations between particles and verbs in teaching particles

Mr. Saito gave the lecture referring to concrete cases and examples. “Volunteer teachers should focus on frequently used expressions and talk about familiar topics related to daily life with the students according to their levels.”
He also indicated some important points such as using colored pens when writing on a whiteboard for easy understanding and teaching with gestures.
This time Mr.Saito kindly replied in paper to the preliminary questions in advance, and furthermore, distributed supplementary materials for further explanations after the lecture. His earnest and polite arrangement was highly appreciated by the organizers and the participants.

(Translated by NAKAJIMA Katsumi)