Japanese Listening Teacher's Book - Second Edition

Author: Chief Editor: Du Qin
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1999-03-01
Features:
Editor's Note: Preface
With the expansion of China's foreign exchanges, the demand for multilingual communication within the country has significantly increased. The use of Japanese in fields such as politics, economy, and culture has also become more frequent. To adapt to this situation, we planned to publish a series of "Japanese Listening" textbooks and entrusted the Japanese Language Department of the School of Foreign Languages at East China Normal University to compile them. This textbook was included in the National "Ninety-Five" Audio-Visual Publication Plan.
"Japanese Listening" is a supplementary listening textbook designed to accompany the teaching of Japanese language majors in universities for grades one to three. It consists of four volumes. Each volume is divided into a teacher's book and a student's book, with each student's book accompanied by an audio cassette. Each volume has a chief editor responsible for overseeing the compilation. The teachers who accepted the task of writing this textbook devoted great enthusiasm to its creation. Based on years of experience in teaching Japanese, they referred to native-language education readers compiled by prestigious Japanese institutions such as the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, reviewed a vast amount of materials, and proposed a completely new approach to the compilation and arrangement of listening content, differing from the conventional methods of using existing Japanese publications for exercises. One of its features lies in breaking away from the common practice of relying on ready-made Japanese publications for assignments. Most of the sample texts were created by the compilers based on their needs, demonstrating high originality. Another feature is that the listening comprehension content accurately addresses the weak areas that Chinese students often struggle with, as well as the unique phonetic and linguistic phenomena of Japanese. The design focuses on aligning with real-life social scenarios in Japan, ensuring high authenticity in language, thereby maximizing the integration of the textbook with actual Japanese life. The third feature is the flexible and varied question formats, which emphasize the improvement of students' comprehensive listening skills while encouraging them to think and solve problems in Japanese, thereby cultivating their practical application abilities in the language. All these efforts are aimed at better embodying the practicality, accuracy, and timeliness of the textbook.
The compilation of this textbook was supported and funded by the Japan Foundation's Japanese Language Center for International Education, which enabled the compilers to travel to Japan to work on the textbook. They engaged in discussions with experts and scholars from top language institutions in Japan and, with their assistance, meticulously revised and approved the content word by word. It can be confidently said that both the content and form of this textbook will reach the highest domestic standards. Here, we express our deep respect and heartfelt gratitude to all the compilers, as well as to the relevant institutions, schools, and experts in Japan. The textbook is scheduled to be fully completed by the end of 1999. We sincerely hope that experts, scholars, and readers engaged in Japanese language teaching and research, as well as the general public, will provide valuable feedback to help us continuously improve and refine the textbook.
East China Normal University Press, May 1998