International Students and Japanese Culture: an Assessment of Pretest Results

When joining a short course such as summer school or university preparatory course in Japan, foreign students are usually introduced to the history, culture, society, and lifestyle of Japan. We designed a short test, covering various aspects of Japanese culture and applied it during several introductory lessons. Based on the test results, the participants tended to show a higher understanding of visible items such as food, weather, and modern lifestyle, while having poorer understanding of the more abstract items such as religions, values, and business culture. In short, applying such a test let the participants reveal their interests in Japanese culture while in the meantime allowed the teacher to assess the level of input knowledge and the needs of the students, and also to evaluate the progress of learning after the lesson. The results of applying such a test identify the need for developing and standardizing a pool of questions so that it could measure effectively various dimensions of Japanese culture for the purpose of the lesson.