Nakama 1: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context (English and Japanese Edition)

This proficiency-oriented introductory Japanese program emphasizes practical communication, the development of all four language skills, student interaction, and cultural awareness. Nakama 1 consists of 12 chapters, and Nakama 2 consists of a review chapter, plus 10 additional chapters. Both volumes feature thematically organized chapters that focus on high-frequency communicative situations and introduce students to the Japanese language and its three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

Professor Seiichi Makino received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1968 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an internationally prominent Japanese linguist and scholar who is recognized throughout the world for his scholarship and for his many publications. Before beginning his tenure at Princeton University in 1991, he taught Japanese language, linguistics and culture at the University of Illinois while training lower division language coordinators. He is an experienced ACTFL oral proficiency trainer in Japanese and frequently trains Japanese instructors internationally in proficiency-oriented instruction and in the administration of the Oral Proficiency Interview. Professor Makino has been the Academic Director of the Japanese Pedagogy M.A. Summer Program at Columbia University since 1996. He also directs the Princeton-in-Ishikawa Summer Program.

Yukiko Abe Hatasa received her Ph.D. in linguistics in 1992 from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She has taught all levels of Japanese for over twenty-five years, and has worked on curriculum development and teacher training in five major institutions in the US, Australia, and Japan. She is known nationwide, as one of the premier Japanese methodologists in the US and Japan. She is currently a professor of Japanese pedagogy at Hiroshima University.

Professor Kazumi Hatasa received his Ph.D. in education in 1989 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently a professor at Purdue University and Director of the Japanese School at Middlebury College. He is recognized internationally for his work in software development for the Japanese language and distributes most of his work as freeware over the Internet.