This award will support a "U.S.-Japan Workshop on Technical Japanese" in May 1989 at the University of Washington in Seattle. The workshop is being jointly sponsored by NSF and the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture under the U.S.-Japan Cooperative Science Program. Approximately 18 U.S. participants will meet with a similar number of Japanese participants for in-depth discussion on : 1) The present state of Japanese language instruction and its relation to needs for technological and scientific activities; 2) Existing philosophies of Japanese language instruction; 3) Instruc- tional materials and technologies; 4) Instructor training and utilization; and 5) An agenda for improving technical Japanese instruction. This workshop will provide a much-needed assessment of the available programs for technically oriented Japanese language instruction. Likewise, it will initiate U.S.-Japan cooperation in efforts to improve and expand such programs. These efforts will address one of the significant barriers to more productive scientific exchange between our two countries.
