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Japan's rapidly aging population and chronic labor shortages have led the country to consider increased reliance on foreign workers. The government promotes the cultivation of nihongo jinzai 'Japanese language human resources' (MOFA, 2013), that is, highly skilled foreign workers proficient in the de facto national language, but in reality, such ideal individuals are scarce. Workplaces thus must explore ways to accommodate workers with limited Japanese competence. By introducing a sequential and multimodal analysis of shift handover interaction between Japanese and foreign care workers at a geriatric facility, the current article critically evaluates the monolingual, logocentric ideology reflected in the ongoing national debate as well as in the institutional convention of information sharing. The examination of the ways in which these workers deploy multimodal semiotic resources for the fulfillment of their duty points to the need for reevaluation of conventional practices in favor of increased affordance of spatial repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent influx of international students from Asia to the United States has drastically changed the demographics of students studying languages, including languages other than English, in many large universities. For some languages, it is not uncommon for international students from Asia to constitute more than 50% of current enrollments in a language class. This new reality poses a number of questions, including how to meet students' diverse needs and goals for language study and how to mobilize increasing student diversity to enhance the development of global competence among all students, regardless of country of origin. Using semi-structured exploratory interviews conducted with domestic and international students of Japanese as a foreign language at an American university, this study investigated the challenges and opportunities presented in the globalized language classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review aims to identify major issues in and the direction of recent L2 Japanese research by reviewing over 200 empirical studies published in English or Japanese between 2000 and 2010. The first part of this article examines topics in second language acquisition (SLA) research with regard to L2 Japanese, including vocabulary and kanji (Chinese characters transferred into Japanese) learning, syntactic development, reading and writing in L2 Japanese, interlanguage pragmatics and language socialization, affective factors, and multilingualism and the acquisition of Japanese as a heritage language. The second part offers an overview of issues and problems in pedagogical practices, including curriculum design, culture in language education, classroom discourse, and study abroad. The review of these themes illustrates a broad picture of current research in L2 Japanese learning and instruction inspired by general trends in SLA and applied linguistics research, as well as unique features of Japanese language and social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the methodological framework of conversation analysis (CA) as a central tool for analysis, this study examines a peer interactive task that occurred in a Japanese as a foreign language classroom. During the short segment of interaction, the students shifted back and forth between the development of an assigned task and the management of problems associated with their lack of lexical knowledge. The close observation of the participants' vocal and nonvocal conduct during these different types of sequences and sequential boundaries demonstrates how the students transform in a moment-by-moment fashion their converging or diverging orientations towards varying types of learning and learning opportunities. Through the presentation of a single case analysis, this study discusses one way of applying CA techniques to the study of classroom interaction in order to promote an overall sensitivity to the intricacies of classroom talk and to generate critical reflection on classroom policies and instructional designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the methodological framework of ‘conversation analysis’ as a central tool of analysis, this paper examines the sequential development of talk‐in‐interaction observed in a small group activity in a Japanese language classroom. While the group work was designed to have students engage in a discussion with native speakers invited to the class, the resulting interaction ended up becoming rather like a structured interview with successive exchanges of the students' questions and the native speaker's answers. How did the instructional design affect the ways in which they developed their talk? And conversely, how did the development of talk demonstrate the participants' orientation to the institutionalized nature of talk? This study explores the relationship among the task instruction, the students' reaction to the instruction during their pre‐task planning, and the actual development of the talk with the native speakers. The students' planning tended to focus on the content of discussion, compiling a list of sequence‐initiating actions, in particular, questions. While the plans contributed to the development of the talk, the episode reveals that a more natural and coherent discussion was afforded by the students' production of spontaneous utterances and attention to the contingent development of talk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]