Woodlea

Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language Program

To support our students in the learning of Japanese, Woodlea has been host to Mina, a university student from Japan. She has been attending lessons from Year 5 to Year 12, to speak in Japanese with the students.

During her stay, Mina has been living with a host family who have been showing Mina some of the sights of Melbourne and the Western Region.

Here is a reflection from Amber S, a Year 9 Japanese student that Mina is staying with:

Having Mina stay with us has been an enjoyable and interesting experience, and it was exciting to show her what Australia is like and share some of our culture with her. Throughout her stay, we had a great time getting to know her, teaching her new English words, visiting different places and spending time together.

During the time that Mina has been staying with us, I also had the opportunity to learn a lot more about the Japanese language. At the beginning, there were some language barriers, so we often had to use Google Translate to help us communicate. As the days went on, Mina became more confident with understanding English words and phrases, which made conversations much easier. At the same time, I gained a better understanding of Japanese and why certain sentences are structured in particular ways. I especially enjoyed completing classwork and homework with Mina because she was always willing to help me and taught me different ways to say words and sentences.

Mina also joined some of my Japanese classes at school where she helped students practise speaking Japanese and improve their confidence. She visited classrooms across different year levels and spoke with students who were studying Japanese, giving them the opportunity to practise their conversational skills with a native Japanese speaker. Having her in our classes made learning Japanese more interesting and helped us improve our speaking skills.

During her time in Australia, we also took Mina to many different places to give her the best experience possible. We visited Ballarat Wildlife Park where we saw many different Australian animals. One of the highlights was seeing kangaroos roaming around the park and being able to feed them throughout the day. Mina also got to experience a koala encounter, where we were able to pat a koala. We stayed at Portarlington to experience the beach and explore the area. Although the weather was not very warm, Mina still had a great time walking around. We also took Mina to the Queen Victoria Market where she visited a lot of stores and had some doughnuts that she was looking forward to. She also enjoyed the seafood banquet that we cooked up.

Overall, hosting Mina was a memorable experience for both of us. We were able to learn more about each other’s cultures and languages while also creating many fun memories together. I really enjoyed spending time with her, having conversations in both English and Japanese, and showing her some of my favourite parts of Australia. I am glad I had the opportunity to host Mina, and it is an experience I can recommend.

Daniel Screen – Teacher/Timetabler (Woodlea)