Japanese is the 11th most spoken language in the world with 128 million speakers worldwide. Approximately 50,000 Japanese live in the United Kingdom. Our Headteacher has a Masters in Advanced Japanese and spent four years living in the country. We believe we are the only Primary School in the UK which offers Japanese as our Modern Foreign Language to children.

We offer a carefully planned sequence of learning experiences, which secures progressive coverage of the skills required by the National Curriculum and supplemented by our professional judgment of what is best for our children. Planning decisions are made in line with our Curriculum Statement and ‘Big Idea’.

We want to share and celebrate Japanese culture with the children. Japan is one of the few cultures which can still be considered ‘alien’ to many children in Britain. Through exciting activities, we intend to develop children’s curiosity and help deepen their understanding of the richness and diversity of the world. A progressive curriculum, which offers frequent repetition of key concepts, has been designed to allow children to overlearn and gradually build on their skills whilst having fun speaking a beautiful language. Every Japanese lesson challenges children to express ideas in Japanese and provides opportunities to interact and communicate with others in speech. Central to our curriculum is the desire to expose children to authentic, fluent Japanese, so fluent speakers, including the Headteacher’s children visit school to support learning.

Written Japanese is extremely difficult. It requires the learner to master two phonetic alphabets (Hiragana and Katakana) and Kanji, which is logographic and meaning based. We aim to introduce all children to the complexity and beauty of written Japanese – challenging them to decode simple sentences using alphabet charts and experience shodo – Japanese calligraphy.

No staff members, other than the Headteacher, speak Japanese which presents a blank slate for everybody to learn together. Therefore, Japanese is taught as a whole school before the children separate for activities based on their ability-levels.  We aim to inspire pupils to develop a love of languages and to expand their horizons to other countries, cultures and people. We aim to help children grow into curious, confident and reflective language learners and to provide them with a foundation that will equip them for further language studies – true global citizens.

Japanese Lessons at School

Lessons are sequenced so prior learning is considered and opportunities for revision of language and grammar are always built in.

Children’s basic vocabulary knowledge and understanding of the basic structure of the Japanese language is the primary focus for all children. A strong emphasis is placed on the development of Speaking and Listening skills. It is emphasised strongly that ‘getting things wrong’ is a key component of learning and that we are all beginning from the same starting point – staff included! The development of a resilient and determined attitude is envisaged to be a distal effect of whole school and staff learning a challenging language together. Basic spoken skills and vocabulary will be embedded and further developed in Upper KS2, alongside an introduction to Reading and Writing. A gradual progression onto more complex language concepts, grammar and greater learner autonomy is planned.

Japanese is taught every Tuesday afternoon, with input to the whole school and opportunities to practice speaking with peers and staff. A series of lessons are suggested, providing structure and context as well as offering an insight into the culture of Japanese-speaking countries and communities. The introduction and revision of key vocabulary and grammatical structures is built into each lesson. This vocabulary is then included in display materials and additional resources so that children have opportunities to repeat and revise their learning. All of our lesson packs contain adult guidance, accurate language subject knowledge and accompanying audio materials.