Yoshimi Kojima has long wanted to create a fun way of teaching kanji to children of overseas origins.

The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies associate professor has finally hit upon a solution.

Kojima, 49, a scholar of the sociology of education with the TUFS Center for Intercultural Studies, led a joint project with a business venture to develop a smartphone app that teaches kanji in eight languages.

The startup has its roots in the University of Electro-Communications, which is also based in Tokyo.

The app, called Taf Marurin, was released in March in an Android edition. It allows users to learn kanji that are taught in the first three grades of elementary school.

“A major strong point of this app is that it allows users to learn kanji in their mother tongues,” Kojima said.

For example, Spanish text above a picture on the app screen showing a cat on a chair says, “¿Donde esta el gato?” (Where is the cat?) Text below the image says in Japanese: “On a chair.”

Touching the screen allows text to be displayed to show how a kanji should be read and what it means. Touching it in a different way allows voices to be played to show how the kanji should be pronounced.

The app is operable in the eight languages of Japanese, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Thai, Tagalog and Bengali. Most of those languages were selected from among typical native languages of foreign residents in Japan who are not from regions where kanji are used.

MEETING THE NEEDS OF NON-JAPANESE CHILDREN

Teaching materials for children, prepared in different languages, have been offered for free on the TUFS website since 2007. Those materials were used in the development of the app, which began in 2021 after Kojima assumed a post at TUFS.

Kojima made abundant use of animated images and voices to make the app fun.

She made sure, for example, that the stroke order is presented in animation by the side while the user is tracing a kanji on the screen to teach how to write it properly.

A chime rings “Ding-dong!” when the correct answer is given. A text appears on the screen to say the equivalent of “That’s it,” along with an animated image of hands applauding.

To allow users to learn how kanji are used, the app also offers sentences showing their usage.

That feature comes with a function for recording the voice of a user who reads them aloud.

NEED FOR KANJI LEARNING GROWING

An increasing number of children of non-Japanese origin are living in Japan.

The 2020 census showed there were 295,188 residents of foreign citizenship aged 19 or younger, up more than 80,000 from about 210,000 a decade earlier.

There are, accordingly, also a growing number of schoolchildren who need to be trained in Japanese.

A survey taken in fiscal 2021 showed that 47,619, or 41.5 percent, of the 114,853 schoolchildren of non-Japanese citizenship who were enrolled in public schools needed training in Japanese, up 7,000 or so from the previous survey of fiscal 2018 and setting a new record.

Children’s lack of Japanese proficiency affects their career choices.

The same fiscal 2021 survey showed the dropout rate was 5.5 percent for high school students who needed training in Japanese, much higher than the dropout rate of 1.0 percent for all high school students.

Among those who were in need of Japanese training, 39.0 percent of those who landed jobs after graduating from high school worked without regular contracts, more than 10 times the corresponding ratio of only 3.3 percent for all corresponding high school graduates.

The kanji to be learned in each school grade are designated by the education ministry’s curriculum guidelines. Teachers therefore sometimes underestimate the scholastic ability of students just because the latter cannot read the kanji they are assumed to be able to read for their grade level.

“Some students are being forced to study kanji alone, even if they have sufficient ability to think in their mother tongues, by teachers who tell them, ‘Why can't you even read kanji like this?’” Kojima said. “That leads many children to lose confidence in themselves.”

PANDEMIC HURT JAPANESE PROFICIENCY

The novel coronavirus pandemic also was a driving force behind the development of the app.

Kojima said she was told by an official with the municipal education board of Nishio, Aichi Prefecture, that children had forgotten their Japanese during school closures, during which time they had notably fewer opportunities to be exposed to Japanese and kanji.

And it was not easy for students of non-Japanese origins to study at home because they could not get help from their parents in doing homework written in Japanese if their parents were not proficient in the language.

Another push came from the education ministry’s decision, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to move up the target date for accomplishing the so-called GIGA School program for providing one personal or tablet computer to every elementary or junior high school student.

Kojima also heard calls, from teachers and nonprofit groups supporting children of non-Japanese origins, for paperless teaching materials. An app would allow those children to readily study at home with their parents, she thought at the time.

In fact, the app is assumed to be not only used by schoolchildren.

Some foreigners hope to enter high school, which is not obligatory in Japan, after coming to live in the country past Japan’s compulsory education age. And many of those who came to Japan as adults have difficulty with kanji.

Kojima said she is hoping those people will also use the app.

Some non-Japanese parents of schoolchildren indeed said, when they tried using Taf Marurin during the development process, that they wanted to use the app for themselves.

Kojima also assumes the app could be used “the other way round.”

Some children of overseas origins have difficulty reading and writing in their native languages, even if they can speak it.

“The app could prompt them to learn reading and writing in their mother tongues,” Kojima said.

Furthermore, Taf Marurin could also give Japanese children an opportunity to learn about the languages their classmates are using.

There are plans to go on updating the app on the basis of user feedback.

“I hope all parties concerned will help develop this app further,” Kojima said.

Born in Saitama Prefecture in 1973, Kojima had an opportunity to become acquainted with schoolchildren of non-Japanese citizenship when she taught at an elementary school in her native prefecture.

That prompted her to take interest in the education for children of overseas origins in Japan and enter the former Osaka University of Foreign Studies.

Kojima studied the circumstances of school attendance by children of non-Japanese citizenship in Kani, Gifu Prefecture, while she was a student with the Osaka University Graduate School of Human Sciences. That was the first fact-finding study of the sort in Japan.

Kojima has been commissioned by the education ministry to serve as an “adviser on the education for children of foreign nationals.”