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This paper is another installment in the ongoing project on early language learning in a Japanese FLES program, conducted by ELLRT (Early Language Learning Research Team): Richard Donato and G. Richard Tucker with graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The Japanese instructor in this FLES program, Yoko Morimoto, has been a teacher-participant providing an insider's perspective. Since 2002, the research team has extended its focus to literacy learning. Chinen, K., Igarashi, K., Donato, R., & Tucker, G. R. (2003), for example, studied literacy recognition, attitudes toward the program and self-assessment of oral proficiency. Takahashi, E., Donato, R., & Tucker, G. R. (unpublished manuscript) examined kanji knowledge development in terms of recognition of meaning and sound extraction. In the present study, the focus moves to literacy production, particularly kanji writing. During the 2003-2004 academic year, we investigated the types of errors that are produced by early language learners in comparison to those produced by Japanese-speaking children. Our qualitative error analysis led us to recognize and try to understand the development of early language learners' personal systems for kanji writing.

During the summer of 2005, a longtime Japanese teacher at a K-8 school in southwestern Pennsylvania unexpectedly resigned. The school, unable to recruit a new teacher for the 2005-2006 school year, chose to suspend the teaching of Japanese and to establish a committee to examine the foreign language program within the overall school curriculum. In this article, the authors present a study that examines the foreign language program at this school. Participants were 20 students from grade 4-8 who had taken Japanese classes from kindergarten through the 2004-2005 academic year. The findings showed that the program had been a somewhat positive language learning experience for these students. They easily recalled specific language learning activities from their previous study, shared their attitudes about these experiences, and claimed they missed learning Japanese. What they best retained from their classroom experience turned out to reflect the routine features of this curriculum--the use of song, target language experience through cultural activities, and unique explanations of Kanji co-created with their teacher and classmates. The findings also suggest that a sustained language learning experience is critical for students' foreign language development. (Contains 4 tables.)