日本語授業におけるビジターセッションの意義—広島市被爆体験伝承者を迎えて—

Year by year the importance of interaction with native speakers while learning a foreign language becomes more significant. Contact situations have to be provided in Japanese language education, and various educational institutions incorporate “visitor sessions” into the foreign language acquisition process. At the University of Warsaw students have many opportunities to interact with native speakers in and out of classes, but the article is focused on a “visitor session” with an A-bomb legacy successor from Hiroshima. The practical report included in this article describes the significance of visitor sessions in the field of foreingn language acquisition. Moreover it presents the significance of such sessions through the perspective of the perception of the A-bomb survivors’ testimonies by describing how in Poland, a Central European country, Japanese language students of intermediate and upper level reacted to the talk by the A-bomb legacy successor from Hiroshima. The anasysis of the effects of a “visitor session” from the perspective of foreign language acquisition shows that besides the increase of vocabulary and improvement in top-down processing competence, the interaction with a native speaker awoke interest and desire for more knowledge about the discussed topic, as well as increased students’ motivation to learn. The questionnaire taken after the session shows a shift in the students’ awareness of the topic, from external interest in the reasons for which the bomb was dropped and its destructive force, to the lives of A-bomb survivors, influencing the internal processes of contemplating war, the human condition, and world peace.