Teaching Japanese Pragmatic Competence Using Film Clips

Abstract

Taking three common pragmatic errors by intermediate students of Japanese as a starting point, namely, overuse of the 1st person pronoun watashi, and incorrect use of hearsay markers and sentence final particles, this paper develops a strategy for employing film clips in classroom and homework exercises to model NS language use and to deepen student understanding of the meanings of these linguistic forms in Japanese, thereby improving their communicative competence. I also show how the verbal forms work in tandem with cinematic devices to create meaning.