Sophia Magazine vol.4 / WINTER 2016

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that you have mastered that language. By teaching Japanese in Sarajevo, Yumi was able to gain practical experience and realize this premise of second-language acquisition.Wakana, on the other hand, had already worked as an in-structor at a Tokyo-based Japanese language school. She says that the differences between that previous teaching ex-perience and the one in Sarajevo led to signicant growth as a professional.“My students in Tokyo come from many different countries. As a result, I tended to focus on the students’ diversity, and I tried to teach Japanese by choosing topics from everyday life in Japan. But that doesn’t work in an environment of learners from just a single country. This made me realize that, in this homogeneous environment, teaching Japanese through dif-ferences and commonalities between Japan and the country of a student’s origin could be effective. My students in Sara-jevo were very passionate about learning, and the time I spent there teaching them was invaluable in that it made me deeply understand that teaching methods need to be adjusted to suit learners’ interests and the learning environment.Wakana continues, “If the learner wants to work for a Japa-nese company following the language courses, we need to think about the level of prociency that will be required. How-ever, since a majority of students in Sarajevo began learning Japanese purely out of curiosity, I believed it was effective to choose Japanese culture as a vehicle for learning.”Her experience in Sarajevo has led Wakana to embrace a new ideal for Japanese language instruction. “Language education teaches language so that a learner can spend time in a society where that language is spoken without inconvenience; it is not designed to give instruction in translation skills. The Japanese language teaching track at Sophia University’s Graduate School of Languages and Lin-guistics has a number of faculty members who are dedicated to second-language acquisition research which includes in-novative Japanese language teaching methods. I hope that in the future, I can participate in an advisory role for Japanese language instructors.”Yumi’s experience in Sarajevo has expanded her horizons as well. “Before my visit, Sarajevo felt like a very foreign place. But I was deeply moved by the enthusiasm of all my students, although their opportunity for learning Japanese is very lim-ited. In the future, through Japanese language education, I would like to become a bridge among interested foreigners, Japan, and other nations.”Bosnia and Herzegovina is a nation in which multiple ethnic cultures coexist in a land with a complicated history. Two aspiring Japanese language educators have found them-selves transformed by their time there, having learned as much as they taught.Applying Second-language AcquisitionResearch to the Front Lines of Japanese Language EducationYumi Orihara (left) and Wakana Kawashima23Student

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