My favourite time of year is January, not only for the lazy days of summer beach swims and books, but for the optimism that a fresh start to the year offers. It is the time of year when I get overly excited about reorganizing cupboards and decluttering. One January, I binge-watched “The Home Edit” series with Joanna Teplin and Clea Shearer and drooled over the organised spaces. I particularly loved the clear tubs that perfectly fitted inside a larger rectangular tub. Like a puzzle, you could mix a combination of different sized tubs and they would all fit neatly inside the larger tub.

This inspired me to think about our Assessment tasks. (Yes, I know I am weird!)

Each year, your cohort is different. I am finding that it is not only the language knowledge and skills I need to consider but my students mental resilience readiness for the type and sequence of assessment tasks I provide them. Creating new assessment tasks takes time but what if, like The Home Edit, I had a cupboard of interchangeable tasks that could be swapped in and out to better suit my current cohort.

Let’s consider the current Year 11 Japanese Beginners Tasks in the Manten Resources suite. You can read more about these tasks via the links.

Home stay preparation

Language camp experience Version 1

Language camp experience Version 2 (new)

Home Room (new)

Online Friends (new)

These tasks could be weighted and combined in a variety of ways with or without a formal preliminary exam. Don’t forget you don’t have to include a formal preliminary exam in your assessment task schedule. You can still provide students with that experience as part of your classwork or wait until Year 12 and really focus on coping with the pressure after they have developed skills in answering to an exam standard in less pressure environments such as single in-class tasks.

The Original Combination

	Home Stay Preparation	Language Camp Experience	Preliminary examination*
Listening	20		10	30
Reading		20	10	30
Speaking		10	10	20
Writing	10		10	20
Total %	30	30	40	100

The Traditional Combination

	Home Room	Online Friends	Preliminary examination*
Listening	10	5	15	30
Reading		15	15	30
Speaking	5	10	5	20
Writing	10	5	5	20
Total %	25	35	40	100

 

The Modern Combination

	Home Room	Language Camp Experience	Online Friends
Listening	15		15	30
Reading		15	15	30
Speaking	5	15	Omit speaking section of task	20
Writing	10		10	20
Total %	30	30	40	100

 

*Note: Manten resources do not make Preliminary exams. These can be purchased from JTAN.

Each of these tasks are stand-alone tasks and do not require the user to be using Jblog 4 textbook or the Kaeru Project text type development resources. For those teachers who are using these resources though the general overlap between each task is listed below.

Each of these tasks are stand-alone tasks and do not require the user to be using Jblog 4 textbook or the Kaeru Project text type development resources. For those teachers who are using these resources though the general overlap between each task is listed below.

Task	Jblog 4 chapters & topics	Kaeru Project
Home Room	JB4 CH1 & 2 plus describing simple common activities and special events e.g. going to school, visiting a café, celebrating Mother’s day.	Course 1 – Diaries & Dialogues
Online Friends	JB4 CH3 & 4 plus describing school camps and excursions, eliciting invitations for simple plans on the weekend or after the HSC, interpreting purpose and intention in texts.	Course 2 – Casual Emails and Letters
Home Stay Preparation	JB4 CH1 & 2 plus responding to questions about yourself and finding common ground between yourself and others	Teachers may like to introduce basic aspects of letter writing from Course 2 – Casual Emails and Letters but completion of the booklet is not necessary for this task.
Language Camp Experience Version 1 or Version 2	JB4 CH3 & 4 plus discussing preferences, school life, aspects of Japanese learning and culture	Course 1 – Diaries & Dialogues Course 2 – Casual Emails and Letters

 

This year, take a fresh look at your Assessment Task schedule and don’t be afraid to repurpose tasks in new ways adjusting weightings, or adding or removing skills to fit your new pathway to knowledge and skill acquisition.

The development of our new Text Type writing skills development series has inspired the creation of several new assessment tasks.

Context & purpose: Tom and Alex are friends from primary currently attending different high schools. They are both studying Japanese in Year 11. Respond to the written texts about the Language Camp and participate in a conversation about yourself.  

Language Camp Version 2 is a reading and speaking task that requires students to answer questions in English about an email, flyer and diary entry related to the camp. This section should take approximately 30 minutes. Teachers then conduct a conversation for 3 minutes with individual students.

This task is designed around language and structures introduced in Jblog 4 Express Chapters 1-4 such as school life, studying Japanese and learning about Japanese culture. Students can prepare for this task through exposure to the Course 1 Diaries and dialogues and Course 2 Casual emails and letters resources. The tasks are stand-alone tasks though and teachers can prepare students for the task via other class activities and resources.

What is the difference between Version 1 and 2?

Context & purpose: You have signed up for a two-day language immersion camp in the school holidays for students studying Japanese. You are attending the orientation day and need to work out the gist and specific information in the orientation package, before being interviewed in Japanese about your selections by the camp support staff.

There is also an existing resource called Language Camp Version 1, originally called Year 11 Task B Language Camp. This task focuses on a table about the available workshops and the questions are more content specific allowing students to demonstrate new skills such as identifying times, reading familiar Katakana words, recognizing cultural terms such as ikebana. This resource comes with 2 versions of the written paper so that teachers can mix and match each year or use one version in class as assessment preparation.

Why do I need this?

You know your own students and are the best person to develop a task that differentiates for the needs of this year’s cohort. All Manten Resources are provided in word and pdf so you can edit the task to suit your preferences, changing vocabulary or the question as you prefer. It is much easier though to rework an existing task then to start with a blank page, so these resources hopefully give you back more of your weekends. For others who love to create from scratch, they might just give you the inspiration for a new direction to take with your own task.

How do I order this? 

You can simply email jblog1help@gmail.com to request a quote or tax invoice for this item. We are always happy to answer questions about the task. Both Version 1 and Version 2 are available for purchase.

The development of our new Text Type writing skills development series has inspired the creation of several new assessment tasks.

Context & purpose: You are on the JET (Japanese Education and Teaching) program working as an assistant English Language teacher. You have been asked to participate in the “My Prefecture” Speech contest at the annual conference. This requires you to give a prepared speech about the region of Japan you are living in and participate in an interview. The next conference will be held in the town of the speech contest winner, so your town is keen for you to win.

Speech contest is a speaking and writing task. The package includes teacher suggestions regarding how the task could be differentiated and delivered in different formats. This task is suitable for both Japanese Beginners and Japanese Continuers students and is particularly useful for teachers who teach both classes together.

This task is designed around language and structures introduced in Jblog 4 Express Chapters 7-8 although students may find the City Focus sections in each chapter to provide useful background information. Students can prepare for this task through exposure to the Course 3 Transitioning from Casual to Polite texts resources. The task is a stand-alone task though and teachers can prepare students for the task via other class activities and resources.

How do I order this? 

You can simply email jblog1help@gmail.com to request a quote or tax invoice for this item. We are always happy to answer questions about the task.

The development of our new Text Type writing skills development series has inspired the creation of several new assessment tasks.

Context & purpose: You have been exchanging emails and messages with your Japanese friend Yumiko and have been researching online in preparation for your visit to Japan.  

Online Friends is a listening, reading and writing task that could be used as a regular assessment task or in lieu of a preliminary exam for cohorts who are not quite ready for the full HSC style experience. It aims to develop skills in answering HSC style questions though by repeating questions in different contexts. For example, the listening section has three “What is the purpose of this announcement?” questions in a row to focus students on the type of questions used in formal exams. There are 8 listening texts in this section.

The reading section focuses on the use of plain form in casual emails and texts although this could be edited to be polite if the teacher chooses to do so. The final writing task continues the theme and teachers could allow students to write draft versions prior to the exam to reduce anxiety levels for students the first time through.

This task is designed around language and structures mainly introduced in Jblog 4 Express Chapters 3-4 such as school and home life. Students can prepare for this task through exposure to the Course 2 Casual Emails and Letters resource. The tasks are stand-alone tasks though and teachers can prepare students for the task via other class activities and resources that focus on describing school camps and excursions, eliciting invitations for simple plans on the weekend or after the HSC, and interpreting purpose and intention in texts.

Why do I need this?

You know your own students and are the best person to develop a task that differentiates for the needs of this year’s cohort. All Manten Resources are provided in word and pdf so you can edit the task to suit your preferences, changing vocabulary or the question as you prefer. It is much easier though to rework an existing task then to start with a blank page, so these resources hopefully give you back more of your weekends. For others who love to create from scratch, they might just give you the inspiration for a new direction to take with your own task. For teachers who run a regular full preliminary exam, this resource may just provide you with additional questions you could swap into your formal exam if you want to personalize your exam or avoid a text that does not match your teaching sequence.

How do I order this? 

You can simply email jblog1help@gmail.com to request a quote or tax invoice for this item. We are always happy to answer questions about the task.

The development of our new Text Type writing skills development series has inspired the creation of several new assessment tasks.

Context & purpose: You are on exchange in Japan. Your pastoral care teacher has assigned you a Japanese buddy. Each day you meet with your buddy and other classmates and practice Japanese by having a short conversation. You also exchange daily diaries in the class notebook.  

Home Room is a listening, speaking and writing task that requires students to write two diary entries, answer questions in English about 7 aural texts and to have conversation with their teacher acting as the Japanese pastoral care teacher. Although it is suggested that the writing section is conducted first to reduce student anxiety (Preliminary students often feel like they need to write down what they have studied before they forget) the task is provided in word and pdf form so teachers can deliver the task as they prefer. It is also acceptable to upload the listening task to any online platform used by the school such as Canvas and manage student access to the task that way.

This task is designed around language and structures introduced in Jblog 4 Express Chapters 1-2 such as discussing your family and special events or activities. Students can prepare for this task through exposure to the Course 1 Diaries and dialogues resources. The tasks are stand-alone tasks though and teachers can prepare students for the task via other class activities and resources. The listening and writing section should take approximately 50 minutes. Teachers then conduct a conversation for 2-3 minutes with individual students.

How do I order this? 

You can simply email jblog1help@gmail.com to request a quote or tax invoice for this item. We are always happy to answer questions about the task.

There is a famous productivity book by Brian Tracy that encourages the reader to “Eat that frog”. This is a metaphor that implores us to tackle the hardest thing on our to do list as the first item of the day, rather than waste time on less important tasks.

When teaching Japanese, I felt like there was an unspoken rule that dictated the order we generally teach students. The order of script acquisition tends to move from Romaji to Hiragana to Katakana with Kanji added regularly along the way. Individual words and phrases progress to set question and answer pairings to lists of grammar structures that can be more widely applied. The polite masu/desu was introduced before the plain form, and features of text types became more of a focus once enough language content had been acquired.

But what if that order was actually creating more work for myself and my students? What if we changed gears and began “eating the frogs’? These ponderings led to the birth of the Kaeru Project.

Project aspirations

Kaeru in Japanese is a homophone for frog (noun) and to return/go home (verb). This resource is designed to be the home base of student writing acquisition, where they feel safe and supported by scaffolds, vocabulary repetition and frequent practice. It is designed as a resource that they can return to frequently (kaeru verb) and as an impetus to hop (kaeru noun) straight into the more complex aspects of Japanese writing acquisition as the first frog of the course.

The new order favoured by the Kaeru project includes an emphasis on text type, Kanji and the plain form from Week 1 of the year 11 course. It is designed to sit alongside the textbook and regular classwork in the form of a weekly writing supplement. It could be used by teachers as a Home study task, holiday review booklet, class warm-up or quiet lesson ending. It is assumed that students will complete three tasks each week and that these tasks will take approximately 5-10 minutes in Course 1. This will gradually increase in subsequent Course booklets to incorporate longer tasks of 15-25 minutes to mirror the length of the longer writing tasks in the HSC.

The resource aims to save some time as the syllabus Kanji are introduced for each new word rather than introducing the word in hiragana, then unlearning that habit to later write the word in Kanji. We “eat the frog” and learn the kanji upfront.

This resource is designed specifically with the Stage 6 Japanese Beginners course in mind, although it could be used with students in Stage 4 and 5. Although it assumes that students are working through the Jblog 4 textbook at the same time, it could be used as a support resource for any textbook or teacher created program. It assumes that students have learned or are learning hiragana and katakana during their regular lessons. It could also be useful for teachers who are teaching Beginners and Continuers in the same class as a common task across the courses.

There are five course booklets in this series:

Course 1: Diaries and Dialogues (plain form focus)

Course 2: Casual Emails and Letters (plain form focus)

Course 3: Transitioning from Casual to Polite texts (including speeches)

Course 4: Messages

Course 5: Articles

Why do I need this?

This task is useful for students in many different contexts from Stage 4 to 6. Consistently bringing the learning back to the bigger picture of communicating in context within a framework of gradually developed scaffolds and familiar language allows students to feel real growth milestones in their writing and reading skills development. Teachers could also use the texts when creating their own assessment tasks or class tasks. The courses also support student preparation for several Manten Resources Assessment tasks as discussed in the Home Edit post. This resource includes a word and pdf version of the student booklet, teacher marking guidelines and a teacher guide.

How do I order this? 

You can simply email jblog1help@gmail.com to request a quote or tax invoice for this item. We are always happy to answer questions about the task.