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The majority of students who take beginner Japanese course (especially, our school Wake Forest University) have never been to Japan and have never talked to Japanese native speakers except for heritage students. Most of their reasons why they take the Japanese class is to be attracted to Japanese cultures such as food or anime. Likewise, many Japanese people want to spread Japanese culture but find it difficult due to lack of opportunities or difficulty in finding foreigners. Therefore, the most effective theme here is to have the students interact with the Japanese students through online materials to exchange what their school life looks like and share the place they want to recommend in each countries.

They will be able to compare and understand the differences and similarities between the US and Japan and also this course not only allows students to learn the Japanese language, but also to use language as a tool to learn about culture through practical conversations with Japanese students.

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Communicate effectively in Japanese through simple conversations, speeches, and in writing about everyday situations related to self, family, friends, home, school, and daily activities

Evaluate attitudes and behaviors for learning about another culture and language

Continue to develop effective study skills and learning strategies

Have a conversations using appropriate levels of formality (formal and Casual speech)

Function in real-life situations in Japanese such as describing illness and asking for a favor.

Can make comparisons between their cultures to Japanese culture

Tools:

Padlet (for interaction with Japanese students. Upload the video and share a comment)

PowerPoint (for a presentation. Give us what they learned and find a new thing through a presentation)

YouTube (for sharing what a Japanese university and students/their life style look like before actually talking to a real student)

VoiceThread (for a speaking assignment. To improve their speaking skills before communicating with Japanese students)

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I created the vocabulary activity to memorize the new vocabularies (around 60 words) with digital tool "vocab test (VT)". This can be changed the multiple choices to typing or Japanese to English to English to Japanese.

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Learning Definitions, Word Definitions Test vocabulary (College life)

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Upload the short video about the favorite place in your college. Comment and ask a question to the classmates' post.

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Flip is where social and emotional learning happens! The leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families.

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They first upload their introduction video. After receiving the comment from the Japanese students, they respond to them at least two sentences.

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A lot of practical ideas and online materials were gained through the course of engaging creating material for three weeks. I have never experienced teaching an online course and also I have only been teaching for two years, which is quite short, so my ideas were really poor compared to other classmates. However, thanks to the feedback and advice from Dr. Kaufmann and classmates, my skills to create online materials with various devices.

One of the most important elements that I learned is backwards design. I had never heard of this term before taking this course, but it turns out this is very important, especially the language class. It can be used in any situations such as making a course, one unit, one lesson and one material. So I will use this technique frequently.

This course really helps and improves my teaching and creating lesson plans. I was always teaching to the students only using the PPT since our program only provides in person class. I also thought the most effective way is to use the PPT to teach in-person class. However, I found out that so many great online tools offered even for synchronous class through this course. I believe I will use more different online tools such as H5p and Perusall. I believe my practice for creating materials has a lot of improvements even there is still room to improve. I only knew Padlet, VoiceThread and Flip because I have used them before, but I had no idea about the other tools. Everyone recommends various kinds of materials and its use depending what we teach. For example, when showing a video or an article, Perusall would be one of the best tools. When practicing and memorizing new vocabularies, VocabTest would be the best option. I only used the tool I already knew because exploring a new tool was challenging, but this course gave me a great opportunity to try various tools based on the needs.

I will continue to practice making online activity for not only for the class, but also for the extracurricular activity. In our school, we have a Japanese studies club weekly. This always provides cultural activities such as cooking Japanese food or crafting traditional stuff. To deepen their learning, it is a great idea to use online engaging materials such as Kahoot or quizlet so that students can learn while enjoying each activity.

Overall, I enjoyed this course for three weeks with fantastic classmates. I really appreciate Dr. Kaufmann's support. Thank you so much!