At the 37th International Conference on Japanese Language Teaching, which looks back on a tradition of being held at a different location every year for the past almost four decades, participants from Japan, Austria, Croatia, Latvia, Germany, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia presented their experience and research findings on teaching Japanese. In addition to the host institution, the University of Debrecen, Japanese language teaching in Hungary was also represented by the staff members of Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University and Károli Gáspár Reformed University.
Foreign Language Center of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Debrecen offers courses in more than ten different languages (including English, Finnish, French, Dutch, Japanese, Latin, Polish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), out which Japanese has been on the bill of fare for thirty years, with an enrolment figure of almost a hundred students who take it every year.
“We do believe that there is no difference in value between the cultures of different peoples. Just as there are no “major languages” and “minor languages,” there are only languages spoken by larger and smaller populations. Japanese is one of the most popular languages offered by our center, with students from almost all faculties of the university signing up to learn about this exotic but beautiful language and rich culture,” said László Pete to hirek.unideb.hu.
The Director of the Foreign Language Center highlighted that the fact that the University of Debrecen was chosen as the venue of this year's international conference on Japanese language teaching, one of the most important conferences in this field, was a great honor for our institution and an explicit recognition of the conscientious and professional teaching work that our language teacher, Aya Sato, had been doing for a long time.
There were 40 teachers from as many as 35 different universities and educational institutions participating in the conference.
“Listening to the 29 presentations of the teachers concerning research and practical experience, we gained a lot of new knowledge, which we will be able to use in the future to promote Japanese language and culture at our university,” said Aya Sato, Japanese language teacher at the Foreign Language Center of the Faculty of Humanities at UD, the chief organizer of the conference. Professor Sato also gave a talk on Japanese language teaching at the University of Debrecen.
At the two-day conference, presentations were delivered on a variety of topics, including “Rhetoric in the Writings of Japanese Language Learners,” “Translating between Cultures: Early Modern Japanese Culture and Visual Media” and “Japanese Language Teaching in High-School Evening Classes.”
The proceedings of the conference will soon be made available online for language professionals, students and the general public.
Press Center – BZs
