FILIPINO LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN JAPAN: THE CASE OF TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

Historical Background The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) was set up in its earliest form as a government translation bureau in 1857, and was then known as the Institute for Research of Foreign Documents.

In 1899, it was transformed into an independent

educational and research institution and called the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, having 5 language departments; namely, English, German, French, Russian and Chinese. In 1949, it was reorganized as a university under the new postwar educational system. At present, approximately 50 languages are taught in the regular curriculum while several more are being researched there. languages in seven areas of study.

The Faculty of Foreign Studies offers 26

Asian languages comprise around half of the total

number of languages being taught, with some of them taught only at our university. Filipino comes under Southeast Asian Studies, and is grouped together with Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Burmese. Southeast Asian Studies is offered as a four-year undergraduate course within the Faculty of Foreign Studies. Tagalog was first offered as a major course in 1945.

It was started in the

belief that Japan would win the Pacific War, and since the Japanese would be occupying the Philippines they would need Tagalog speakers.

However, it was only offered for

four years until 1949, one reason being that nobody could teach the language properly. The Tagalog teacher during that time was a Spanish teacher connected with the university who got hold of a Tagalog grammar book and used it in class.

The other

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reason, of course, is that Japan lost the Pacific War so there was no further need to offer the course. Twenty students each year majored in Tagalog when it was offered from 1945-1949. The present Philippine Studies Program was officially established in 1993.

In

1992, some students who were accepted to major in Malaysian were asked if they wanted to shift to Filipino. Five of them volunteered to do so, and they became the first Filipino majors in the present program.

When Filipino was officially offered the

following year, 15 students were admitted, which was the maximum number that could be admitted to the program at that time.

However, in 2006, when all national

universities including ours were partly privatized, the maximum number was increased to 20.

So far, we have filled the allowed quota in our program every year since

inception. Moreover the number of applicants wishing to enter our program has increased year after year and now Filipino is one of the more popular courses in the Southeast Asian Studies program.

Challenges and Issues during the Early Stage of the Program One major challenge during the early stages of the program was the absence of a Filipino textbook written in Japanese.

All the Filipino conversation and grammar

books that we were able to obtain were either written in Tagalog or English. However, most Japanese students have difficulty understanding English, even if they have studied it for several years in middle school and high school. written in English would have been futile.

Therefore, using a textbook

The only way forward was for us to create

our own. Four years before the Filipino program was officially offered at the university,

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Prof. Michiko Yamashita and yours truly taught Filipino to police officers from all over Japan at a language institute designated by the National Police Academy of Japan. This Filipino language program was a 10-month intensive course consisting of 3 hours of language lessons daily, 5 days a week. We taught this program for 5 consecutive years. During the initial stages of the program Prof. Yamashita and I started making our own lessons to use in our classes. It was a furious effort on our part to be able to produce as many lessons as we did, due to the intensive nature of the program. We used several published conversation and grammar books as references, including Tagalog for Beginners by Teresita Ramos and Videa de Guzman, and Intensive Tagalog for Expatriates by Wilfredo Muyargas. We therefore used the same self-produced materials at the university during the first year. Another challenge that we have constantly faced is the absence of a Tagalog-Japanese and/or Japanese-Tagalog dictionary. All available dictionaries are either Tagalog-English or English-Tagalog. not understand English well.

As mentioned above, most Japanese do

Using these dictionaries is quite a challenge for them,

and it is a long process just to look up the meaning of a word.

If a student wants to

know the meaning of a Tagalog word, he has to look up the English equivalent and then use an English-Japanese dictionary to properly grasp the meaning of the word, albeit through an English filter.

He has to follow the same process in the opposite order if he

wants to find out the equivalent of a Japanese word in Tagalog. This issue has not been addressed satisfactorily to date, since no comprehensive Japanese-Tagalog or Tagalog-Japanese dictionary has ever been published. While a few Japanese-Tagalog mini-dictionaries and word lists do exist, they are only useful for beginners. Teaching staff members at our university have compiled a

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simple Japanese-Tagalog dictionary with a total of over 20,000 words, for the exclusive use of our students, but it is still not as comprehensive as we would like. Another challenge which we face is the unavailability of Tagalog-English or English-Tagalog dictionaries in Japan. They are not available in the university library and very few bookstores sell them in Tokyo. Moreover, if they are available at all, they are quite expensive. And with the increasing number of students who want to enter the Filipino program, whatever stock is available in local bookstores is not enough. So the only way we can supply all of our students is to order the dictionaries from a bookstore in Manila and have them sent to our university. In spite of the shipping charges, the cost of one dictionary is still cheaper than if it is bought in Tokyo. We order these dictionaries before the end of each school year, so that by the time the new school year starts the dictionaries will have already arrived, ready to be distributed to the incoming freshmen. The lack of teachers who are qualified to teach the program is also an ongoing issue. As we all know, just being a native speaker of a language does not mean that the speaker can systematically teach the language.

A proper educational background and

training are necessary to be able to teach any language effectively, including Filipino. There was only one regular faculty member and one part-time teacher when the program started, which was good enough for the first 2 years.

But because the

maximum number of students was always admitted to the Filipino program since the third year of the program, the need arose to hire more teachers. So, part-time teachers were hired, but none of them had the proper background or training. Moreover, since the language of instruction to date has been Japanese, a teacher of Filipino has had to be able to teach in Japanese. To this end, one of our graduates from the Philippine

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Studies Program who acquired his master’s degree at the University of the Philippines has been a part-time member of our teaching staff for several years now.

The Curriculum and Textbook One aim of the Faculty of Foreign Studies is to provide students with a deep understanding and knowledge of the languages, cultures, and societies found in various regions of the globe. Therefore, a student who chooses to major in Filipino is expected to develop a deep understanding and knowledge of the language, culture and society of the Philippines in particular and Southeast Asia in general.

As a school policy, the

students spend their first and second years intensively studying the language of their major. In the Philippine Studies program, all language classes are semestral. Students are required to take six 90-minute weekly classes of Filipino per semester, during their freshman and sophomore years.

Four of these classes are Basic and Advanced

Grammar while the other two are Oral Communication. However, in their junior and senior years, the required number of Filipino classes decreases dramatically to only one a semester: Reading and Composition. Classes in Area Studies are designed to allow students to obtain a basic and comprehensive understanding of the culture and society of a particular area.

Students

must take four such classes by the time they complete their second year. These classes concentrate on the culture, art, history, geography, economy and politics of the Philippines.

The classes offered include Introduction to Philippine Studies,

Introduction to Philippine Literature & History etc. In their junior and senior years, students are required to complete six classes pertaining to Southeast Asia in general.

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The Filipino language textbook that is currently being used in the Grammar classes is a revised and improved version of the lessons that we prepared for the police officers. It is a collaborative effort between the faculty and other linguist colleagues from the Philippines who were consulted along the way. The first part came out in bound form in 1993 and the second part in 1994.

The introduction gives an

explanation of the Filipino alphabet and pronunciation, including accent marks. The lessons in the first part cover: basic greetings and social expressions, topic with ang-form and equivalent pronouns, possessive ng and sa expressions with the equivalent personal and possessive pronouns, locative sa, existential and possessive expressions using may, mayroon, wala, marami, negation, modification and linker, numerals, date and time expressions, pseudo-verbs gusto, ayaw, kailangan, mag-, um-, - in and i- verbs. The second part of the book which came out a year later continues from where the first part left off. The lessons are all about verbs, which are –an, mang-, ma-, mma-an, circumstantial mode verbs maka-, ma-, mai-, ma-an, and finally causative verbs. The general format for most lessons is as follows: Conversation or Short Article, List of New Words and Meanings, Commonly Used Expressions, Grammar Explanation and Exercises.

The textbooks are only available for the exclusive use of

our students and are not for sale. Aside from our textbook, magazines, newspapers, and books written in Filipino are used as instructional materials.

Movies, TV programs, and news programs

pertaining to the Philippines are also used as supplementary materials.

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Student Activities that Strengthen Appreciation of the Philippines Cultural Activities There are several student activities which enforce the language and culture learning process at our university.

One of them is the university-wide cultural festival.

In Japan, all universities hold a cultural festival every fall. The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies cultural festival, which is called Gaigosai, is the largest annual event at the school. It is held in the 3rd week of November and runs for five days. This is when students get to enjoy first-hand the culture of the country whose language they are majoring in. Freshmen students set up ethnic food booths that serve delicious regional dishes, while sophomore students present a play in the language that they are majoring in.

These plays may be original or adapted from published sources.

Therefore, in keeping with this tradition, Filipino freshmen students set up a food booth which serves Filipino food. Prior to this the students go to a Philippine restaurant in Tokyo and try different dishes there in order to decide which dishes to serve at the booth. They also ask the advice of teachers and the more senior students about what dishes were well received in previous years. Then, they have at least two cooking lessons before they cook these dishes themselves to serve at the booths. The dishes that have ended up being favorites year after year are:

adobo, menudo, pansit,

pansit molo, ginatan and turon. Food booths are also set up and decorated in Philippine style. Students use posters, textiles, and other decorations which they buy or make themselves. They also have traditional costumes tailored or bought in the Philippines - balintawak for girls and barong Tagalog for the boys - which they wear throughout the festival. Meanwhile, sophomore students present a play in Filipino. Our department has

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presented original plays every year which show different traditions in the Philippines, such as the harvest season, Christmas traditions, pamamanhikan (a guy asking for a lady’s hand in marriage from the family), and the holding of a beauty contest in a barrio. All of these are musicals, which include Philippine songs and dances.

The students

spend several weeks memorizing their lines and practicing songs, dances and gestures in preparation for the main performance.

They also prepare the stage setting and props.

Interestingly, a dance troupe, now known as the Philippine Cultural Dance Troupe of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, was started as an offshoot of the first Filipino musicale that we presented in 1994. Among the audience at that time were several staff members of the Philippine embassy in Tokyo. In 1995, the dancers were invited to perform at the farewell party for the then outgoing Philippine ambassador to Japan, Domingo Siazon, Jr. (who is again the current ambassador).

This, as well as an

invitation to perform at a seminar sponsored by the Tokyo office of the Philippine Department of Tourism, provided the impetus for the formal organization of the dance troupe. Membership in the dance troupe is voluntary, not obligatory.

Any Filipino

major is free to join the dance troupe, but he must be willing to undergo intensive training and practice.

Once a year, the dance troupe goes to Manila for dance

workshops and intensive training at the studio of the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group, a dance troupe started by the late National Artist Ramon Obusan.

The students pay their

own air fare and food expenses. To date, our dance troupe has performed in more than 200 programs in Japan which have been sponsored by the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo as well as other foreign and Japanese organizations. The dance troupe has also performed almost

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annually in major cities in the Philippines since 1997.

Aside from the Philippines and

Japan, the dance troupe has performed in Singapore and in the US, particularly at Cornell University and at Indiana University in South Bend. Because of their involvement in the dance troupe, the students not only learn the language, but immerse themselves deeper in the culture of the Philippines.

They

are able to emote and express themselves like Filipinos when they dance and sing because they have learned the appropriate facial expressions.

They also develop deep

friendships with the dance masters and members of the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group during the workshops, and this motivates them to use the language.

I am proud to say

that those students who join the dance troupe are the ones who excel in Filipino and the ones who have learned to love the Philippines and its people.

Student Exchange Program Our university has a memorandum of agreement with UP about student exchange.

We can send as many as 10 Japanese students to UP every year and the

same number of UP students can be sent to our university.

However, out of the 10

Japanese students that we send to UP, only the most deserving student’s tuition fee is waived but he gets no monthly allowance.

The others have to pay both their own

tuition fees and living expenses. For UP students coming to our university, only one student’s tuition fee is waived. He also receives a monthly allowance for the duration of his one-year program. Because of this exchange program, several of our majors have opted to spend a year studying at UP.

Most of the students who go are in their junior or senior year.

They are free to choose the subjects they want to take at UP, with most of the chosen

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subjects in the social sciences or humanities. Some have taken Philippine History, Sociology, Mass Communications, Anthropology, Linguistics and even Physical Education. Most of them return to our university with a better understanding and appreciation of the Philippines and its people.

Some of them also have decided to go

back to the Philippines for graduate studies and even for employment.

Alumni and Graduates of the Program The present Philippine Studies Program is now in its 16th year.

It has become

one of the more popular Southeast Asian languages that students would like to major in at our university.

It has also produced a lot of graduates who have gone on to pursue

their careers in different fields.

Some graduates have continued with post-graduate

studies overseas, majoring in international relations, architecture, urban planning, economics, etc.

Those who have obtained their Ph.D., M.A and M.B.A degrees have

found employment as researchers, financial analysts, instructors, etc. in Japanese universities, Japanese embassies overseas, United Nations agencies and multinational companies.

Those with undergraduate degrees have found employment in fields such

as broadcasting, insurance, airlines, hotels, steelmaking, and banking.

Some of them

have found employment in Philippine companies with offices in Tokyo like Philippine Airlines and Philippine National Bank, and even the Philippine Embassy, while some are with Japanese companies that have branch offices in the Philippines. However, very few of them would like to pursue further studies in linguistics and Filipino language teaching.

In fact, we have only produced one graduate who has finished his

M.A. at UP and majored in Filipino.

Two students are pursuing their PhD in

Philippine Studies at the National University of Singapore, and hopefully they will be

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able to obtain their degrees as soon as they can.

Concerns about the Future of the Program The present regular teaching staff is not going to remain at the university forever.

In fact, one of them will be retiring in a couple of years.

Therefore, the

major concern is who will take over teaching the Philippine Studies Program? Who will be able to sustain the present curriculum and manage the activities of the Philippine Cultural Dance Troupe with the same zeal and enthusiasm that the present teaching staff has shown?

Who will have the proper qualifications and experience in order to

continue the Filipino program at all? I have high hopes that more Japanese students will pursue further studies in order to sustain the present Filipino program with the same vision that led to the program’s inception. I believe that the biggest obstruction to further progress in the program is university policy.

The university sets a limit on the number of students admitted every

year and decides the class schedules for major courses. Because university policy dictates that the number of major language classes taken actually decreases during the students’ junior and senior years, the students have already forgotten the language by the time they graduate.

The momentum of the intensive training that they undergo

during their freshman and sophomore years is cut short.

What’s worse, this is

university policy, so there is nothing that we can do about it.

Learning Experiences On a personal and more positive note, I have learned a lot from teaching in the program.

Firstly, my Japanese language ability has improved. It was a big struggle

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for me at the start when I could not express myself well in Japanese, and more so because I had to teach Filipino in Japanese.

Since teaching involves more than a

command of daily conversation in the language, I had to learn and master the technical terms involved in teaching Filipino.

And because teaching is a two-way process

between teacher and student, I also had to get used to not only the standard Japanese spoken in Tokyo but also to the dialectal differences among my students in order for me to understand them. Secondly, I discovered that I had the ability to be creative and artistic.

I have

been able to discover, tap and develop this ability when writing the scripts for the plays that the sophomore students have presented at the university cultural festival every year. I have turned them into musicales in order to make them more entertaining for the viewing audience.

I have directed these musicales, decided the cast, chosen the songs

and dances to be performed, chosen the background music for the play, and given the students ideas on stage settings. And lastly, I have learned so much from my students who have challenged me to become a better teacher.

Japanese students are not used to interacting in the

classroom; therefore they do not actively participate in class discussions. But because language is an interactive entity, I have had to think of ways to draw out comments or answers from them, and come up with teaching techniques to make them participate, such as role-playing, language games and question-and-answer exercises.

Moreover,

these have proven to be very effective tools for language learning because they are fun things to do. I am really privileged to have been part of the program from its inception, because it has been a wonderful learning and enriching experience. The journey still

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continues and I hope that I have been able to contribute to making Filipino language learning in Japan an exciting and rewarding experience for Japanese students who have dared to broaden their horizons.

Leith Casel-Schutz Visiting Associate Professor Tokyo University of Foreign Studies December 2009

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