Japanese class on the rise in Cork school

Not all classes start with students standing and bowing to the teacher — but that’s what happens when teenagers come into Gretta Daly’s Japanese classes.

Her 11 fifth-year students at Coláiste Daibhéid in Cork city centre have been learning the language since last year, when it was one of their transition-year classes, but kept it on due to interest in Japan, its culture and its people.

Unlike some who take Japanese just to fulfil language requirements for college entry, these six girls and five boys have picked it in addition to the compulsory French taken by all the school’s senior-cycle students.

They began last Monday’s class at the all-Irish school with a refresher of some of the different farewells they had started learning about last week. From snippets of audio, students identify different phrases, who was using them and in what circumstances. “This is how somebody might say farewell if they are leaving before the others in a group,” Ms Daly explains, after one student recognised a speaker say, “I’m being rude”.

The formal greeting with which students and teacher bowed to each other at the outset may be a tradition in Japan, but it is also a sign of respect for Ms Daly. They were unsurprised that she received one of four Language Teacher of the Year awards at last Friday’s Léargas European Language Label 2017 awards.

They said her style is to go through things slowly to ensure they can all keep up with what sounds like very advanced conversation to the outside observer.

“I’m finding it fine, I don’t have any great difficulties,” said student, Anna Kuom.

For Oscar Moore, transition year was not his first experience of the Japanese language. “I knew some of the basic words, from watching animé and reading manga for years, and I enjoyed it when we started learning it. It’s easy enough,” he said.

Animation videos and manga comics have been a big factor in the trebling of numbers doing Leaving Certificate Japanese in a decade to around 300 a year, helped by ease of access to a generation of techie teens.

The rise is so great that Gretta Daly holds a class on Saturdays at another city school, St Angela's College. The use of a classroom there means students from around Cork city and county can learn Japanese for free as an extra subject to those they study for Leaving Certificate at their own schools.

“I’m hoping for great things from the recent Pokemon craze, in terms of a fresh new pipeline of keen students in a few years time,” Ms Daly said.

The initiative is funded through the Post Primary Language Initiative, but its 20 teachers of Japanese and eight who teach Russian are not employed directly by the schools or education and training boards (ETBs) where they work.

They are also unable to accrue pension or contract hours entitlements, partly linked to some schools’ concerns about impacting other languages, but the situation could be addressed in the Department of Education’s forthcoming strategy on foreign languages.

The other Language Teacher of the Year award recipients included Katie Hannon, whose students at Meánscoil San Nioclás in An Rinn, Co Waterford, get to flirt in Spanish through speed-dating, and Annie Asgard who helps pupils whose home language is not English, at Claddagh National School in Co Galway.

Maria Whitty-Sexton received her award for her work at Coláiste Bríde in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, including trips to a local German bakery.