fundamentals of japaneseby toyoaki uehara; gisaburo kiyose

Fundamentals of Japanese by Toyoaki Uehara; Gisaburo KiyoseReview by: Hiroshi MiyajiThe Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), pp. 106-111Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489180 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

FUNDAMENTALS OF JAPANESE, by Toyoaki Uehara and Gisaburo

Kiyose. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press and Tenri: Tenri University Press, 1974. xii and 10, 552pp. $15.00. (paperback)

Reviewed by HIROSHI MIYAJI

University of Pennsylvania

First of all, the reviewer of a language textbook should pay proper respect to the author's dedication to the language teaching profession and his willingness to sacrifice a great amount of time and energy to its

compilation. It is much easier to criticize a textbook than actually write one. Secondly, criticism of a textbook would be more meaningful if the reviewer had the opportunity to use it in a classroom situation, in order to receive some input from the students. Thirdly, the value of a textbook will vary relative to different factors: the goals and structure of the course, the

quality of the teachers and students who employ the

text, etc. In other words, there is no textbook which can be called the textbook. Fourthly, a reviewer may be merely expressing a philosophy of language pedagogy different from the author. I must say, therefore, that the best and most significant review of this new textbook should be offered by the authors themselves, Professors Uehara and Kiyose, in the form of self- criticism. An instructor, however, often has to choose the text he will use, and in this context only will my review have some value. I am aware that some short-

comings, which I shall point out, can be corrected when



BOOK REVIEWS: MIYAJI

the text is put into actual use, and some may turn out to be trivial.

This textbook is divided into three parts. Twenty- six reading lessons covering 222 "sentence patterns" constitute Part One. Each pattern with some accompanying grammatical explanations is followed by a drill section and example sentences. The lessons introduce 467 kanji in their various occurrences. Part Two is an outline of Japanese phonology, orthography, and grammar. In Part Three, the vocabulary and kanji used in Part One are arranged by the order of lessons, kanji by stroke numbers, and vocabulary by the syllabary order. The print is clear and the quality of paper is excellent. It is regrettable, however, that the textbook fell short of fulfilling what is said to be the existing "need for a fundamental Japanese text that will combine the advan- tage of the new audio-lingual approach with the merits of the traditional methods" (iii, preface by Liu). The text, we are told, was conceived to produce "an over- all basic reader that provides comprehensive pattern drills for beginners of the language trained in a wide range of teaching methods" (Ibid.). In reality, the product is a peculiar jumble of pedagogical ideas. The text is not based upon sound or thorough linguistic, methodological and statistical research. Any examiner of the text, whether teacher or student, is bound to recognize its weaknesses quickly. I shall cite just a few here.

1) Part One of the text begins from the right end of the book and Part Two followed by Part Three from the left. This arrangement of three parts apparently is due to the drastic differences between traditional Japanese and English writing systems. However, because these parts are bound into a single volume, the effec- tiveness of the grammar section (Part Two) and the character and vocabulary indices (Part Three) is greatly hindered. Also, I found it a strain on my eyes going back and forth, in Part One, between the two facing pages of patterns, drills, and example sentences: on the right-hand page Japanese sentences are printed horizontally and on the left-hand page the same

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Japanese sentences appear in romanization along with

grammatical explanations and the English translations of example sentences. In Part One when a reference to Part Two or Three is made, e.g., "see III.D.7," there is no direct and quick way to locate the entry. The user has to consult the table of contents each time. There is no grammar index and consequently it is hope- lessly difficult to refer to any particular grammatical item when necessary.

2) Conversations in various lessons are written

primarily for the purpose of introducing the so-called sentence patterns. Consequently, they are artificial, unnatural, and have very little to do with real spoken Japanese.

3) The authors state: "Since this is an introduc-

tory text the so-called Desu-Masu style is chosen"

(viii). According to this reviewer's experience, be-

ginners can easily acquire skills in Japanese honorifics,

using Jorden's text. The development of proficiency in

spoken Japanese cannot be expected from exclusive ad- herence to the Desu-Masu style. The authors shy away from explicating their view, saying, "The grammatical explanation in this book is limited to the grammar used in the Desu-Masu style because almost all beginners are generally introduced to Japanese through the Desu- Masu style" (11.68). I found this an unconvincing statement.

4) Each sentence pattern is followed by a drill section composed of seven short sentences and a section of five to seven example sentences. These sections have little value. The drill sections do not really provide meaningful pattern drills at all. Example sentences introduce the new vocabulary arbitrarily, and then the

vocabulary index in Part Three completely ignores the

vocabulary introduced in the example sentences. Thus, I assume their mastery is left totally up to the students' initiative. I recognize some merit in this

approach, but without even minimum guidance from a

teacher, the uncontrolled introduction of vocabulary will become either an unnecessary psychological burden




or entirely insignificant for beginners. There is no

point in romanizing drill sentences. It is more important and helpful to have carefully designed aural-oral and written exercises in each lesson.

5) The authors claim: "The sentence patterns have been devised to progress step by step from the simple to the more complex"; and "We have chosen to avoid making such selections from the so-called 'basic vocabulary'"; and, further, "We have not always followed the policy on the use of kanji indicated by government directives" (vii). These claims would have been acceptable if the authors had clarified and followed well defined criteria for the selection of sentence patterns, vocabulary, and kanji.

The only criterion for the gradation of sentence patterns seems to be simple versus complex, and coor- dinating versus subordinating construction on the surface level. But it is naive and simplistic to assume a complex sentence is more difficult to learn than a simple sentence. Existential use of the copula desu appears as pattern 130 (p. 213) despite the fact that desu for identification or definition is the first pattern of the text (p. 7), and aru and iru are introduced by the patterns 27 and 28 respectively (pp. 49 and 51). There seems to be no logical foundation for the arrangement of these patterns. I question the validity of identifying some constructions as sentence patterns. I would hesitate to call such a construction as "Ototo wa ju-go desu," a sentence pattern (p. 95). The problem is the failure to define such basic concepts as "pattern," "gradation," and "difficulty in learning." The following words, which belong to the first two hundred words having the highest degree of usage, as determined by the National Language Research Institute (Vocabulary and Chinese Characters in Ninety Magazines of Today, 1964), are not included in the lessons of this textbook: - - t - - i E

% .4 HHJ It . Further, otoko (Jl) is introduced in lesson XIII but is not on the vocabulary list nor in the index. Saigo ( )

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is used but not saigo ( J )-. Dare ka and dare mo appear in lesson XVI but I could not come across dare anywhere in the text. I must add that dare ka and dare mo cannot be found in the vocabulary index. It is left to the discretion of the authors to select vocabulary items, and the value of relative importance of vocabulary changes depending upon the materials used for statistical analysis. However, the above-mentioned omissions, rooted in negligence and carelessness, are inexcusable.

This same issue can be easily raised with regard to the selection of kanji. And there are additional problems: 1) The authors made a serious mistake, which is un- fortunately not unique to them, of introducing some kanji for the first time as parts of proper nouns, e.g.,

K Ik, JII (p. 12); 2) They give many readings for each kanji, both on and kun, not used in the lessons and without examples of usages, e.g., nori for x (III.123), BAI for a (111.143), ki(ku) for {IJ < (II1.143). Of course, Japanese proper nouns are written in kanji and, thus, the use of kanji as parts of proper nouns has to be introduced; but there is little reason why such kanji as 2 p I 2 should be introduced for the first time in this way. The arbitrary introduction of an immense variety of readings for kanji is nothing more than unnecessary pedantry.

6) The grammatical analysis offered by this book is quite sketchy, uneven in quality, and confusing. The generative-transformational approach, which can be a powerful tool in grammatical explanations, is given practically no consideration. Thus, the authors fail to offer any clear explanation for many complex grammatical problems, such as subject deletion rules and con- straints on the use of particles. (See, for example, II.67-68.) The authors say: "We are not unimpressed with the number of contributions thus far made in the field of Japanese language studies. Yet the majority of them have a perspective of Japanese based only on their authors' mother tongue, and it frequently happens that they propound theories about Japanese quite un- hindered by the facts of the language" (vii). While this criticism may be valid when a grammar is a surface

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grammar, the authors contradict themselves by exten- sively relying upon such concepts as "nominative," "dative," "ablative," "strong and weak conjugation," "medio-passive," etc. Are these assumed to be universals? They must realize that native speakers of Japanese often fail to see the facts of the language. I shall not deal with each questionable grammatical explanation; they are too numerous to be dealt with in this limited space.

7) In the section on Japanese orthography, we read: "It should also be noted that the long vowel sound ex- pressed by 'oo' in romanized spelling, as in 'ookii,' 'toori,' 'koori,' 'hoo,' etc., should be written by adding the letter td instead of the letter 5 . It is a fact that this rule is ambiguously stated in the directive from the Ministry of Education. Therefore, for those who study Japanese as a foreign language it would be more helpful if there were a brief description of the diachronically different processes in the evo- lution of the modern long vowel "oo." Students will still make spelling mistakes, but at least they will understand the basis for this rule.

The authors explain that katakana is used for loan words and foreign words, especially foreign proper nouns. (11.15) If katakana is used exclusively for this purpose--we know that this is not the case--why are so many common nouns, which are supposedly written in hiragana and kanji, transcribed into katakana even for the sake of practice? To my knowledge, there are no well-established rules for katakana transcription; for example, it is groundless and misleading to assign

" for /v/ (II.24).

It is difficult to understand how a pair of our colleagues, who have a good reputation, could produce such an unimpressive work. Nor has it been carefully proof-read. Only a teacher with superior qualities can rescue this textbook and I am definitely not qualified.

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fundamentals of japaneseby toyoaki uehara; gisaburo kiyose

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