AC9LJ2U01 Years 1 to 2 Languages

Content descriptor recognise and imitate the sounds and rhythms of Japanese and learn how sounds are produced and represented in different scripts

Elaborations

• • Elaboration singing songs or repeating language after the teacher with a focus on practising and producing the 5 vowel sounds, and the consonant plus vowel sounds, using the hiragana chart and image-based mnemonics as reference
• • Elaboration recognising the concept of the basic unit of sound in Japanese ‘mora’: モーラ or 拍はく, for example, いいえ has 3 moras, which can be recognised as syllables in English, for example, clapping out the number of sounds in focus language, and guessing the number of syllables in a Japanese word by closing eyes and holding up one finger per syllable
• • Elaboration understanding that the independent nasal sound ‘n’ ん has a mora of its own, for example, こんにちは
• • Elaboration learning that statements and questions have different intonation patterns and using gestures to indicate the intonation patterns they hear, for example, the arm moving up when the intonation rises
• • Elaboration using mnemonic devices, and also making up their own, to remember the sounds and shapes of hiragana by associating them with pictures, for example, こ for coin
• • Elaboration understanding that one kana represents a basic unit of Japanese sound, for example, showing on the hiragana chart how each character represents one sound
• • Elaboration understanding that when pronouncing Japanese, it is important to keep the length of each mora even