students and teachers speaking

[Kama]

Hi. I'm starting to teach a group of children (boys & girls, most of them are up to secondary school, I think) Japanese begginer's lessons.

I wondered how I should speak to them durring lessons (plain form? kun? san?) and how should they adress me?

 

[Shineko]

I think at that age it would still be fine for you to call the males "kun" and the females "san". As you are there teacher, you they should call you simple sensei or yourname-sensei, whichever you prefer.

Teaching Japanese as a foreign language, I think using the polite form might be better. Not quite sure about this, I cannot remember how it was in the high school in Japan nor the elementary school. There are only few times when you can go wrong with the polite form. Plain should be left for more friendly conversations, in my opinion.

 

[lonesoullost3]

Linguistic studies by Haruko Cook (1996/7) show that in general, teachers use the distal form (polite as some call it) when addressing elementary school students as a class, and switch into direct form (plain as some call it) when addressing individual students. However, male teachers were more likely to use direct style forms when addressing the class than women. And while women occasionally used distal form when talking to individuals, men never used distal form. So part of your choice in language lies with gender identity as well (though she does not focus on this point). Her conclusion is that when presenting a "model image" of oneself, or in a situation, as Senko Maynard has described, where "awareness of the addressee is high" (as when you are addressing an entire class and are quite aware everyone is paying attention to you and how you act), the distal form is the form of choice.

Again, this is no hard-and-fast rule, but more of a general trend that bends depending on each individual's identity of him/herself.

At the university level, my sensei has always talked to me in direct form at higher levels, probably because we (as a class and sensei) did become more amiable as we reached those levels and could joke around more.

I hope this helps.

 

[Kama]

Well, I'll be teaching them polite form only (at last for few next months). I was asking also, because they are in a guild that tries to recreate the Edo era , so I will teach them more polite language too.

Thanks, that helped me.