Levels of Learning Difficulty as Perceived by Japanese Language : Teachers and Japanese Language Learners

The first goal of this research project was to consider how levels of learning difficulty experienced by Japanese language learnners are differently perceived by teachers （93 teachers）， Asian learners of Japanese （164 students） and Chinese, Korean, and American learners of Japanese （185 students）. The second goal was to determine the measures taken by Japanese language learners to resolve their difficulties. Factor analysis was used to determine six factors （practical skills in advanced Japanese expressions, communication with the teacher, learnlng enviroments and psychology, ability at reading and writing Japanese characters, learner’s personal factors．） From this, it became apparent that the problems faced by students emerge from various factors involved in studying Japanese. As a result of analyzing differeces in the mean average of each category, two things became apparent. First, in comparison to the learners，teachers were much more concerned about the difficulty level of “practical skills in advanced Japanese expression” and the “ability at readingand writing Japanese characters.” Second，among students，there was a tendency to locate high levels of diffculty in a“confusion of spoken language and written language. ”In addition, 58％ of the Asian students reported actively working towards resolving their difficulties, the majority of which responded they would do so alone