専攻科目における日本語イマージョン教育の学習効果と学習環境

Abstract

.The purpose of this research is to prove the extent to which the Japanese immersion program at Korea University assists its students with their major courses and to use a questionnaire survey to obtain instant feedback as to the type of learning environment they prefer. The research targeted 49 students (46 Korean students and 3 Chinese students), all of whom have had previous experiences in taking courses taught in Japanese at Korea University. The survey polled students for their opinions on their own experiences regarding major courses taught in Japanese such as “Understanding of Japanese I,” “Understanding of modern Japanese literature I,” and “Modern Japanese society and pop culture.” Participants were asked to indicate the strengths and weaknesses, areas requiring improvement, opportunities for future development, and so on. The following results were obtained. The main impact of Japanese immersion education is the “improvement of Japanese language proficiency,” whereas six other items, such as “improving awareness of the learning process,” “knowledge on specific topics and improvement of Japanese language proficiency,” “increasing the motivation for studying Japanese”, “improvement of knowledge on the specific topic,” and “the teacher,” are also mentioned in this order. As we can tell from this result, many students consider the Japanese immersion program on major courses useful for improving their Japanese language ability in a way that is quite natural, simultaneously providing them with specific vocabularies and expressions used in that field. Although opinions of the learning environment of the Japanese immersion program could be divided into the categories of “teachers,” “facilities of the university,” and “learner,” most were focused on “teachers.” This finding proves that many think teachers’ ability is the key factor for successful immersion education. Teachers and the university should be required to share and consider the result of this research thoroughly, in order to implement more effective plans for successful immersion education.