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| For the Love of Anime: Middle Schoolers
Plunge into
Japanese Language Classes
Maryland Newsline Wednesday, May 4, 2005 Rifah Huq searches the Internet every day after school for new Japanese shows and soundtracks. The seventh grader has downloaded more than 1,300 cartoon and movie soundtracks onto her personal computer. “It takes a long time to download episodes,” said Huq, who is particularly fond of Fullmetal Alchemist, a comic book series about an alchemist who can transform objects. Huq’s obsession with all things Japanese prompted her to enroll last school year in language class. This year, she’s in her second year of Japanese at Sudbrook Magnet Middle School in Baltimore County. She said she’s finding that learning the language has been useful. A lot of the shows she likes are spoken in Japanese. Japanese language teachers in three Maryland jurisdictions say they are seeing a growing number of middle-school students like Huq learning the language to further their interests in anime -- the Japanese video games, cartoons and comics that have become popular in the United States since the 1990s. Japanese language programs are offered in Baltimore and Prince George’s counties, and this school year also in Montgomery. Teachers say by merging students’ interests in anime (which means “animation” in Japanese), with their coursework, students are willing to learn about other cultures and customs. Dr. Tyrone Parker, foreign language specialist at the Maryland Department of Education, says the state doesn’t require public middle school students to take a foreign language, but each jurisdiction decides what to offer based on funding and demand. While students taking Japanese are a fraction of those taking other languages, their numbers are growing, he said. More than 30,000 Maryland middle school students have taken Spanish every year since 2001, and almost 10,000 students have taken French, Parker said. Just 306 public middle school students are enrolled in Japanese language courses in Maryland this school year. But the number of students taking the language has risen 17 percent in three years -- from 260 in the 2001-2002 school year. Those numbers are nearly evenly split between Baltimore and Prince George's counties. A Magnet Language Sudbrook, the only school in Baltimore County that offers Japanese, has made the language available since 1994, said Susan Spinnato, coordinator of world languages for the county. She says 151 students -- just under half of the state's total -- were registered for classes in December. But Spinnato says she expects a rise in Japanese registration numbers because of students’ interest in anime and because the College Board will offer an advanced placement exam in Japanese in two years. Nick Moorman, one of three Japanese language teachers at Sudbrook, teaches 75 students in six classes. The New York native who learned to speak Japanese while living in Japan has been teaching the language at the middle school for 10 years. Moorman says even students who aren’t taking his class often pick up Japanese terms on their favorite programs and stop him in the hallway to ask what they mean. As part of the course, he teaches a unit on anime and asks students to draw comics to teach grammar structure and Japanese behaviors and customs. Seventh grader Samuel Gruber says he first developed his passion for Japanese comic books, or manga, while drawing in Moorman’s class. Gruber says he wanted to learn more about the drawing style and enrolled in February in a non-credit, college-level class in manga and Japanese culture at the Community College of Baltimore County, Owings Mills campus. Gruber said he is enjoying the college class on Saturdays and is learning how to draw Japanese villages well, although “the Japanese culture part is boring, because I learned that last year” in middle school. Connections in the Classroom One school in Prince George’s County -- Andrew Jackson Middle School in Forestville -- also accounts for almost half of the public middle school students enrolled in Japanese language courses in the state. This school year, 131 students are taking Japanese at Jackson, officials said. Registration for the school's six classes is growing, says Ogawa Tetsuo, the school's Japanese language teacher. Tetsuo, a native of Wokayama, Japan, says he taught about 100 students in his Introduction to Japanese course when he first started teaching at Andrew Jackson in 2001. Maria Flores, county supervisor of foreign languages for grades K-12, says the language was first offered in the county 20 years ago. Since then, she says, the program has developed to expose students to more of the culture. “These middle school courses are more hands-on, and the students love that,” Flores says about the curriculum, which not only includes anime, but trips to Japan and the Japanese Embassy. Tetsuo, who has taught Japanese at summer camps, schools, universities and businesses, says his students respond well to using Japanese comic books as a teaching tool. “Most of the students are into Asian culture, thanks to anime and martial arts,” said Tetsuo, who has a degree in history with a concentration in Japanese folklore from Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. “They don’t get to see many Asians in this area, and at this age, they’re not afraid to ask any questions.” He says he tries to help students make the connection between his classroom and their daily life by using manga to teach practical information, like food names. At lunchtime, he said, students often ask him about their favorite Japanese characters. “Students want to know … what they symbolize and mean,” he says. “Whatever interests them, I use for their education.” A New Class Pyle Middle School in Bethesda started the first Japanese language class in Montgomery County this school year. Twenty-four students are enrolled in the class. Dr. Roy Robison, the county's program supervisor of foreign languages, says the course was offered so students will become proficient in learning and using Asian languages. Yuki Moorman says she teaches the Japanese language class to seventh- and eighth-graders at Pyle on a high school level. She says she hopes the class will be offered next school year, so that the middle school students will have a better chance at passing the Japanese AP exam in high school. Originally from Tokyo, Moorman has been teaching Japanese for 26 years. She uses anime movies, like Princess of Mononoke, the adventures of a cursed young warrior, to teach her students emotions, expressions and body language in Japanese -- subjects the textbook doesn’t cover. Shinobu Anzai, a lecturer who teaches elementary Japanese language courses at the University of Maryland, College Park, agrees anime helps kids identify with the culture and better understand the language. “Knowing language is not good enough, you have to know background and culture,” said Anzai, who was raised on comics and magazines in Kagawa, Japan, and stocks her own collection on a monthly basis. While anime can be fun and entertaining, Lindsay Yotsukura, an associate professor who teaches Japanese language courses at the University of Maryland, said it should not be used for formal learning of the language. Meanwhile, Huq spends her Saturdays watching a line-up of anime from 8 a.m. until way past midnight on the Cartoon Network cable channel. If she can stay up, she watches the more mature anime. “Anime isn't exactly a little kid thing always, because at 11 p.m., Cartoon Network turns to Adult Swim, where you have to be at least fourteen to watch,” she says. “Most anime fans can't help” but do so, she says. Copyright ©
2005 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of
Journalism
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