The aim of the Japanese program at Halls Head Community College is to enable students to explore the Japanese language, to learn about the vivid culture and to discover the ever-changing modern day Japan. Students have the opportunity to utilize real magazines, comics, music, and toys from Japan throughout their Japanese study. Many students have studied Japanese previously and we are able to build on the language and cultural studies that students have experienced in the past.
Learning a language is all about using it. During every lesson all students have the opportunity to demonstrate and strengthen their speaking and listening skills and become more confident in what they can do. They also develop skills in the Japanese writing systems of hiragana, katakana and kanji and lessen their dependence on the roman alphabet.

• Our Japanese Zoo Experience

  When my school got the chance to go to the Perth Zoo, our Japanese Teacher gave us a task to do. The task was to try and find a person who could be Japanese. We then had to ask them firstly if they were Japanese. If we were successful at this we then had to find out their name and their age. We had to record this on our sheet to use later at school.
  It was scary at first but a fun experience to have using our Japanese. Not everyone I asked was Japanese but they were really nice and kind to us.
  Dushenka Wood
  Year 8 Student
  
  

• How we learn Hiragana

  Instead of practicing hiragana by writing it many times we learn how to write it using plastisine. I myself found it much more fun and exciting and it definitely helped me towards remembering it. We looked forward to each plasticine lesson because writing can be a little tiring sometimes, and using the plasticine to make hiragana letters made me concentrate more because it was fun.
  Samantha Holt
  Year 8 Student
  
  

• Year 8 Japanese

  At Halls Head Community College our LOTE is Japanese. Our Japanese teacher Fabling Sensei has taught us some great things!
  One of those things was Hinamatsuri, which is called ‘Girls Day’. It is on 3rd March and near that time while learning about this day we made origami hinamatsuri dolls. ‘Girls Day’ is where mothers pass down their dolls to their daughters and we thought this was a great idea. Another thing we learnt about was ‘Kodomo no hi’ – Boys or Children’s Day. This is celebrated on 5th May and Koinobori carp fish streamers and sockets are hung to celebrate. We made our own Koinobori streamers to hang in our classrooms to celebrate this lovely day.
  Japanese is a great language and hopefully a lot of people will learn more of this language.
  Simone Pezzutti
  Year 8 Student