How to transform a beginning learner into a Japanese character on the theater stage: Pronunciation training aimed at learning communicative competence

Since the communicative approach gained popularity in the 1970s, drama-based activities such as role-plays have been widely used in a language-teaching setup. In the field of Japanese language education, Hashimoto (2009) proposed a drama-based approach to teaching pronunciation, arguing for its effectiveness in teaching para-linguistic characteristics of speech such as the speaker’s intention, emotion, attitude. Since 2004, I have been coordinating a Japanese language theater group in Italy. Every year we produce a full-fledged theater piece. We have so far performed thirteen original plays in theaters. The majority of our actors are beginning Italian learners of Japanese. To reach their goal, i.e., to transform themselves into Japanese characters on the stage, they need to learn not only Japanese pronunciation, but also the para-linguistic characteristics of speech, gestures and expressions that are natural and appropriate for an assigned role and a certain speech context. This paper introduces our activities and actor-training program and discusses training results briefly.