The structure of the bookMost Japanese presented in this book is
in rōmaji, with hiragana (or katakana where necessary) as well as some essential Kanji, with rōmaji presented as ruby text. We intend to introduce essential Japanese characters gradually, whilst still giving the support our students need at Primary level. ‘Activities which focus on reading comprehension use
rōmaji, to allow learners to focus on the meaning of the vocabulary and being able to use the language quickly and spontaneously.’
This book contains 7 units which concern themselves with a specific communicative function, as listed in the Table of Contents.
Each unit includes:- a sentence builder modelling the target constructions, introduced by questions to guide communication;
- a set of Listening-As-Modelling activities to train decoding skills, sound awareness, speech-segmentation, lexical-retrieval and parsing skills;
- a set of reading tasks focusing on both the meaning and structural levels of the text;
- a set of translation tasks aimed at consolidation through retrieval practice;
- a set of writing tasks targeting essential writing micro-skills such as spelling, functional and positional processing, editing and communication of meaning.
- a set of writing tasks targeting hiragana learning in context, and familiarisation to Kanji.
Each sentence builder at the beginning of a unit contains one or more constructions which have been selected with real-life communication in mind (although certain structures have been simplified to help Primary level learners). Each unit is built around that construction
but not solely on it. Based on the principle that each E.P.I instructional sequence must move from modelling to production in a seamless and organic way, each unit expands on the material in each sentence builder by embedding it in texts and graded tasks which contain both familiar and unfamiliar (but comprehensible and learnable) vocabulary and structures. Through lots of careful recycling and thorough and extensive processing of the input, by the end of each unit the student has many opportunities to encounter and process the new vocabulary and patterns with material from the previous units.
Alongside the units you will find: Oral Ping Pong, One Pen One Dice & No Snakes No Ladders tasks created to practise speaking skills with an engaging and fun games that can be photocopied and played in groups of 3 students.
Important caveats1)
Listening as modelling is an essential part of E.P.I. The listening files for each listening unit can be found in the AUDIO section on Language-Gym.com - a subscription to the website is
not required to access these.
2)
All content in this booklet matches the content on the
Sentence Builders websites. For best results, we recommend a mixture of communicative, retrieval practice games, combined withSentence Builders.com games and assignments, and then this booklet as the follow-up, either in class or for homework.
3) This booklet is suitable for
beginner learners and is an ideal follow-on from
Japanese Primary Sentence Builders – Part 1 (Ab initio). This booklet equates to a
CEFR A1 level, or a beginner
KS2 (or KS3) class. You do not need to start at the beginning, although you may want to dip in to certain units for revision/recycling.
