Emotion-Emission & Connexion in Japanese Language Teaching/Learning in the 21th Century

For which reasons do European people wish to start learning Japanese? In a Japanese classroom at a European university, students’ relations with Japan and its culture are quite various. Students are from “Manga generation” or they are “fans of Kurosawa movies”, traditional arts, martial arts, and so on. This variety in their interests shows, however, a common feature – a desire “to be connected with Japan”, its culture, its people, its natural and social phenomena. They want to communicate with Japan, to read and listen to Japanese people’s voices and they also want to be read, listened to and to be understood by Japanese people.
As a Japanese Language teacher, I have a feeling to be guided by “students’ aim to learn”, rather than by my mission “to teach to them”. The aim of this presentation is to share a teacher’s experience of his/her personal evolution that we can consider as a process of teaching and learning. A teacher does not only teach, but also learns from his/her students.
Just after 3.11 Tohoku Earthquake in 2011, my students were deeply shocked and sad. The emotions shared in classroom gave me a real discovery and surprise. The students were indeed touched by this tragedy and wanted to help Japan. But how? After several hours of discussion in classrooms and in SNS, more than 60 Belgian students of Liège University decided to lead a letter writing project, in which each one could participate using their own Japanese Language skills. Using hiragana and katakana just mastered during the class, putting their names or pictures, manga-like croquis. 3 big-sized handwritten letters were sent to an elementary school in Fukushima in June 2011. This “Belgian sympathy” to their Japanese friends made a “happy return”, that is, more than 100 handwritten “Arigato” responses arrived from Fukushima children several months after. Throughout this Letter project, these students have experienced a real sensation of communication, in connecting with someone and being in an emotional commitment – that would provide them with self-esteem as a learner of Japanese Language.
I would like to mention another example of communication experience using Japanese Language, not a “handwritten” but a “cyber” one (2017). This is “Wikipedia-article writing project” meant to describe a Belgian city – Louvain-la-Neuve –, in which B1-level students participated, with a hope to help Japanese students wishing to come studying in Belgium in the future.