Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language in the Elementary Schools : Problems and Their Solutions

The purpose of the article is to find out the actual situations and problems posited in 'Japanese Language in the Elementary Schools'(JLES) in Hiroshima Prefecture, and to give the directions to the improvement of JLES. There has been rapid increase in number of foreign pupils, especially Brazilian pupils, in Japanese schools since 1990. Hiroshima Pref. has about three hundred and twenty foreign students in the elementary schools and junior high schools. Consequently, speciaUapanese language education classrooms have been created in most of the schools for compulsory education which have accepted foreign students. The Japanese language education classrooms are responsible for giving them basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP). I focused on the intensive training of BICS as one component of JLES in the present article. I gave the BICS course its own framework. I mean by framework that JLES is a system, where its essence, i.e., what JLES is, is central. I discussed the essence of JLES from which its aims come