Patricia J. Wetzel

Mari Noda

Ginger Marcus

Stephen D. Luft

Shinsuke Tsuchiya

Masayuki Itomitsu

NihonGO NOW! is a beginning-level courseware package that takes a performed-culture approach to learning Japanese. This innovative approach balances the need for an intellectual understanding of structural elements with multiple opportunities to experience the language within its cultural context. From the outset, learners are presented with samples of authentic language that are context-sensitive and culturally coherent. Instructional time is used primarily to rehearse interactions that learners of Japanese are likely to encounter in the future, whether they involve speaking, listening, writing, or reading. Level 1 comprises two textbooks with accompanying activity books. These four books in combination with audio files allow instructors to adapt a beginning-level course, such as the first year of college Japanese, to their students’ needs. They focus on language and modeled behavior, providing opportunities for learners to acquire language through performance templates. Online resources provide additional support for both students and instructors. Audio files, videos, supplementary exercises, and a teachers’ manual are available at www.routledge.com/9781138304147. NihonGO NOW! Level 1 Volume 1 Textbook is ideally accompanied by the Level 1 Volume 1 Activity Book, which provides core texts and additional practice for beginning-level students.

Performing Japanese Culture - Level 1 Volume 1 Textbook

日本語NOW! NihonGO NOW!

NihonGO NOW! is a beginning-level courseware package that takes a performed-culture approach to learning Japanese. This innovative approach balances the need for an intellectual understanding of structural elements with multiple opportunities to experience the language within its cultural context. From the outset, learners are presented with samples of authentic language that are context-sensitive and culturally coherent. Instructional time is used primarily to rehearse interactions that learners of Japanese are likely to encounter in the future, whether they involve speaking, listening, writing, or reading. Level 1 is comprised of two textbooks with accompanying activity books. These four books in combination with audio files allow instructors to adapt a beginning-level course, such as the first year of college Japanese, to their students’ needs. They focus on language and modeled behavior, providing opportunities for learners to acquire language through performance templates. Online resources provide additional support for both students and instructors. Audio files, videos, supplementary exercises, and a teachers’ manual are available at www.routledge.com/9781138304147.

Performing Japanese Culture - Level 1 Volume 1 Textbook and Activity Book

Wetzel argues that these functions took center stage as keigo was put to use in the service of modernization and democratization, eventually becoming a matter of "common sense." But keigo is more than a gauge of status, and a close look at the linguistic landscape of Japan makes this explicit. Demonstrating how thoroughly social and interpersonal cues find their way into the fabric of Japanese, Wetzel astutely observes that there is no linguistic place in Japan that is not keigo."--BOOK JACKET.

Polite Language from Meiji to the Present

Keigo in Modern Japan

NihonGO NOW! Level 2 is an intermediate-level courseware package that takes a performed-culture approach to learning Japanese. This approach balances the need for an intellectual understanding of structural elements with multiple opportunities to experience the language within its cultural context. From the outset, learners are presented with samples of authentic language that are context-sensitive and culturally coherent. Instructional time is used primarily to rehearse interactions that learners of Japanese are likely to encounter in the future, whether they involve speaking, listening, writing, or reading. Level 2 comprises two textbooks with accompanying activity books. These four books in combination with audio and video files allow instructors to adapt an intermediate-level course, such as the second or third year of college Japanese, to their students’ needs. They focus on language and modeled behavior, providing opportunities for learners to acquire language through performance templates. Online resources provide additional support for both students and instructors. Audio files, videos, supplementary exercises, and a teachers’ manual are available at www.routledge.com/9781138305304. NihonGO NOW! Level 2 Volume 2 Activity Book provides a wealth of communicative exercises for students following the Level 2 Volume 2 Textbook.

Performing Japanese Culture – Level 2 Volume 2 Activity Book

Patricia Wetzel offers in this volume a comprehensive examination of a frequently discussed yet much misunderstood aspect of the Japanese language. Keigo, or “polite language,” is often viewed as a quaint accessory to Japanese grammar and a relic of Japan’s feudal past. Nothing, Wetzel contends, could be further from the truth. It is true that Japan has a long history of differentiating linguistic form on the basis of social status, psychological detachment, emotional reserve, and a host of other context-dependent factors. But, as is made clear in this unique and broadly framed study, modern keigo consciousness and keigo grammar emerged out of Japan’s encounter with Western intellectual trends in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Keigo in Modern Japan presents a finely nuanced linguistic and political review of keigo available nowhere else in English. The first chapter outlines the ways in which keigo has been problematized in Western linguistics through the application of structuralist analysis and its offshoots. But keigo’s presence in the English-language literature does not begin to compare with the place it occupies in the Japanese linguistic canon. Wetzel describes the historical roots and growth of keigo and the popularity of how-to manuals, which, she contends, are less about overt instruction than reinforcing what people already believe.

Patricia J. Wetzel

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