Crenças e necessidades de aprendizes de japonês como LE (língua estrangeira) a respeito da habilidade da escrita e materiais didáticos

Abstract

This paper looks into the beliefs and needs of students of Japanese as a Foreign Language (henceforth JFL) regarding writing skills and teaching materials. The aim of this research is to understand JFL students’ present attitude towards their studies as well as to identify their beliefs and needs. To achieve that, the concepts of beliefs presented by Alvarez (2007), Barcelos (2001,2006,2007), Conceição (2004), Kalaja (2005), Pajares (1992), McKay (2003), Kawaguchi; Yokomizo (2005) and the definition of writing proposed by Yui (2005) were used. As for the methodology, the split method, which mixes both qualitative and quantitative approaches, was used as an analysis procedure. The participants in this pilot research were students of intermediate level in the Japanese Language and Literature course of the University of Brasilia. The data was collected by means of a questionnaire (quantitative research) and an interview (qualitative research). In regard to beliefs concerning writing, it was revealed that the participants in this research believe that the act of writing in Japanese daily is not so important if compared with other skills. It was also verified that there is a lack of teaching materials for writing and opportunities that motivate them to write in Japanese. It can be concluded from these results that for the JFL students to develop their writing skills it is necessary to provide them with teaching materials and opportunities to motivate them to write (type) in Japanese daily, besides developing online teaching materials which may lead them to learning autonomy