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TK4Lakers · Joined: 06 Jan 2006 Posts: 159

This month I am to teach romaji to my ES students (grades 4,5,6).

In the first lesson, I gave them a romaji chart, had them practice writing a-z, and gave them a little word search activity.

Now I am a bit stumped on what to do next. I would like to make the lessons as fun as I can, because for the most part writing can be dull.

Any ideas or references you can provide for me? Thanks.

canuck · Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 1921 Location: Japan

Venti · Joined: 19 Oct 2006 Posts: 171 Location: Kanto, Japan

You could break them up into teams, give each team a complete alphabet set (all mixed up, of course), write a few simple words on the blackboard, and have the teams compete to see which can gather the appropriate letters (within each team), make it to the board, and spell out the words with their letters first.
Give one point to the fastest team. Increase the level of difficulty accordingly. Once they've tried this a time or two, don't write the words on the board anymore; just say them. Of course, use the same words that were written before.
In general, try some physical games that will get them moving around and having a good time. They won't master the alphabet during your class; they'll do that through homework and in their homeroom class.

ShaggyZ · Joined: 20 Nov 2006 Posts: 25 Location: Alberta

What the heck is romaji?

JimDunlop2 · Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Posts: 2286 Location: Japan

Kore wa romanji desu.

It's Japanese written using the Roman alphabet. But unless you are referring to just that -- Japanese words written using the Roman alphabet, it's probably better to say that you are teaching the alphabet....

Willy_In_Japan · Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 329

I believe that official Romaji (Kunreshiki) that is taught in Elementary school teaches 'Shi' to be written 'Si'.

Therefore, Sushi would be written 'Susi'.

There is also a 'problem' with 'Tsu' being written 'Tu'.

Of couse they have no idea that removing these letters gives an English speaker no clue how to pronounce the word.

I think that Kunreshiki is totally useless, however, that is what they teach in Elementary school.

The Romaji that most westerners are familiar with is the Hepburn method (Hebonshiki), however, this is not considered 'official'.

I personally believe that this is the root of Japanese students saying 'See' for 'She' and 'She' for 'See'.

Willy_In_Japan · Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 329

How about Shiritori using Romaji?

Or Karuta using cities written in Romaji?

furiousmilksheikali · Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:41 am Post subject:

johanne · Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 189

If you are teaching the alphabet, you should be teaching the sounds the letters make more than the name of the actual letter - ahh instead of eh (a). IMHO the best way to start is to teach the short vowel sounds and have them making 3 letter words right away. They can make nonsense words like yot, dit as well as real words like cat, fit, etc. Once they have that mastered they should be a good chunk of times on blends such as words containing short vowel starting with "sl", "gl", "gr", etc. Japanese tend to want to write a vowel between these sounds since that is what they do with katakana. The earlier you can get that out of their system the better their pronounciation and spelling will be. Then you can move on to "magic e" - changing "mad" to "made" and other complex vowel sounds such as "ai", "ay", "ee", "ea", "ei" "ie" "ow" "ou", etc. All of this would keep them busy for an entire academic year, especially if you incorporate new vocab and simple sentence structures as you teach it.

If you google "phonics activities" you will find tons of ideas on how to teach this is a fun, engaging way using lots of game and building up vocab at the same time. Good luck