CLF Lectures on Japanese Academic Innovation Team
On theafternoon of June 3rd, together with series of lectures, including Lectureson Japanese Language Education, on Literature and Culture, on Society andEconomy as well as on Talent Development, the Academic Salon was hosted by theacademic innovation team of Japanese language and literature research in room202, CFL Building. Associate Prof. Zhang Chao, from Japanese Department, wasthe keynote speaker for these lectures, collectively titled the Comparisonbetween Traditional Repeating Exercise and the Shadowing Exercise which is PutInto the Intensive Course for Japanese Majors.
ProfessorZhang started with a brief introduction of the definition of the Shadowing Exerciseand its application in foreign language teaching. Shadowing exercise means thatreaders shall completely repeat what the speakers said within a near-simultaneous interval. It is always applied to the courses of translation andthe second language acquisition for training interpreting and simultaneousinterpreting as well as improving the learners’ capacity of using foreignlanguages. However, there are a few empirical studies on the comprehensiveinvestigation of Japanese abilities of Chinese JFL learners.
Then,professor Zhang presented her empirical research paper on the effect ofshadowing exercise after being put into the Japanese Intensive Course. Thesubjects of this research were sophomores of the Japanese Department. Aftercomparing the effect between traditional repeating exercise and the shadowingexercise, she made the following conclusions:
First, boththe traditional repeating exercise and shadowing exercise can improve the totalscore and itemized scores of listening, words and vocabularies as well asreading.
Second,generally speaking, shadowing exercise has greater effects on the improvementof learners’ vocabularies than the traditional repeating exercise.
Third,compared to the traditional repeating exercise, the shadowing exercise couldefficiently improve low-achievers’ scores of vocabularies and reading. At last,professor Zhang shared his experience in conducting his empirical teachingthesis with teachers and students.
Teachers ofthe Japanese Department, foreign teachers, teachers of the Department offeatured courses for non- English major as well as some Japanese undergraduateswere attracted to participate in those lectures. They listened with greatinterest and exchanged views with professor Zhang on the details and effects ofthe application of shadowing exercise in Japanese teaching and on how to applyit to Japanese aqcuisition. They also made discussion on how to establishexperimental group and control group,on how to rule out other factors except the experimental purpose and how toget research subjects’ acknowledgment and relationship. The atmosphere of thoselectures was lively and all the participants acquired lots of knowledge.
CFL Xu Xiuzi
