Tomoko Kaneda

<p>A renewed Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language, in order to carry out its mission, has set among its goals an involvement with research topics related to society, and action aimed at resolving social issues. The Society decided to set concrete tasks for society-related research and action in each mid-term plan, inaugurated a joint conference on survey research, and selected three topics for research and of social action respectively.</p><p>To promote sharing of these topics, and understanding of their goals, among the Society members, this article explains why and how the topics were chosen, and how the Society will deal with them in the current plan.</p>

Establishing a Japanese language education system for resident foreigners is an important task in Japan, which is becoming a multicultural society. The objective of this sub-project, which took place from October 2009 to March 2013, was to create a list of "Japanese language for living in Japan" to be used as a basic reference in reviewing the content of Japanese language education programs for resident foreigners in Japan. The study was conducted in Hamamatsu and Hiroshima and examined the frequency, level of difficulty, and importance of 105 linguistic behaviors in 14 settings involving different situations and topics. Subsequently, an analysis was carried out on the factors that determine the level of difficulty and importance. This study presents the results, along with the results of a nationwide survey conducted in 2008.

<p>The acquisition of Japanese language skills useful in daily life is essential for people who come to Japan to make it their home, whether for work or for marriage. Accordingly, a test that can measure Japanese language ability for daily life should function as a guidepost and incentive for Japanese language acquisition adapted to the learner's stage of life, and should provide an appropriate explanation of Japanese language ability. The current officially recognized tests, however, are designed for learners whose goals are study or business, and are unable to measure Japanese language ability for daily life.</p><p>But one large-scale test, the Dutch Civic Integration Examination, combining performance evaluation of language competence with a portfolio evaluation, aims to measure language ability for use in actual life, as well as to promote the use of Dutch in society. In this paper I refer to the Dutch test in a consideration of the possibilities and problems of measuring Japanese language ability for daily life.</p>