Since 1999, we have been honing our original format for foreign language communication classes in Japan.Our materials take into account the Japanese cultural realities of classroom interaction, speaking styles and values. We take the long-term view of incrementally refining our material, based on actual classroom teaching, because we know that small details can make huge differences.
About Alma Publishing
To actively support the field of conversation teaching in Japan.
Conversation teaching, while probably the most commonly taught class by foreigners here in Japan, is still an area fraught with problems. One of the more serious of these is the way it is sometimes perceived (by teachers, students, and the general public) as an unfocused, amateurish ‘filler’ subject. Contrary to this negative image, we believe that that conversation can and should be explicitly taught, particularly at the lower levels. Conversation teaching for us is training students to orally exchange original and personal information in real time . Teaching this valuable skill, especially to groups of lower-level Japanese students, in fact requires great competence on the part of the teacher, who must:
- give the right amount of appropriate linguistic content at the right time,
- establish a group dynamic and strong, clear aims to sustain pair and group practice, and
- point out the cultural and pragmatic differences between Japanese and English conversation, and show students how to overcome miscommunication which may arise in natural conversation.
