On 15 to 18 March, our staff visited Dunedin in New Zealand and met with members of JETAA Otago-South Island to talk about their future activities. This sub-chapter is based in Dunedin, which is located on the South Island of New Zealand. Up until now, the JETAA South Island chapter covered activities in the entire South Island region, but in order to promote JETAA’s activities specifically in the southern area of the South Island, the subchapter was established officially.
As a part of this visit, our staff also observed a Japanese class and an ESL class at Taieri College and interviewed Ms. Haruko Stuart, who is a Teaching Fellow in Japanese at the University of Otago, about the current situation of students who study Japanese and applications of the JET Programme. Our staff also met Ms. Naoko Inoue, who researches English language teaching from the sociolinguistic point of view and talked about English teaching in Japan.
We found that the students are very interested in Japanese language and culture, and the JET Programme is well known to them. A lot of students seem to be fascinated by Japan. We hope they will participate in the JET Programme and succeed in Japan in the future.