FAQs

Classroom instruction time and approach

How much class time is needed to complete all 12 lessons of QUARTET?

Used as suggested, QUARTET 1 and 2 each take around 100 hours to complete, totaling approximately 200 hours of instruction. As a general guide, each lesson spans 16 hours, comprising 8 hours for Reading (including grammatical patterns and expressions), 2 hours for Writing, 3 hours for Speaking, 1 hour for Listening, and 2 hours for Brush-up. (Here, one hour is a literal hour, i.e., 60 minutes.)

Can QUARTET still be used if the suggested amount of class time is not available?

The flexibility of QUARTET’s design enables teachers to make tweaks needed to accommodate courses with less time available. For example, the instructor can choose to assign the Reading section’s grammatical patterns/expressions and the Brush-up section as homework, or reduce the number of dialogues, listening exercises, and readings to one each. Another approach is to adjust the weight of each section to match the curriculum and learners’ needs.

Do the lessons need to be taught in the order they appear (1 to 12)?

Each lesson assumes that the content of preceding lessons has been studied. This means, for example, that grammatical patterns and expressions learned in Lesson 1 are not accompanied by 文型・表現ノート commentary when they reappear in subsequent units. Also, English translations and kanji readings are not provided for words and kanji already studied. Since QUARTET 1 (Lessons 1–6) covers many frequently used grammatical patterns, expressions, words, and kanji, we recommend that these six units be studied in the order they appear. However, QUARTET 2 (Lessons 7–12) can be more easily tailored to the learners’ interests and needs, such as by changing the lesson order or omitting certain lessons.

Do the Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening sections need to be studied in the order they appear?

It is not necessary to go through these sections in order, but it is advisable to always start with the Reading section because it introduces new grammatical patterns and expressions that appear in the other sections. This is especially true for the Writing section, since its composition exercises are based on the reading material studied in Reading.

Other textbooks don't have material like QUARTET's Brush-ups or Reading Strategies. How do I make effective use of these?

The Brush-ups' 初級文法チェック (QUARTET 1) is an opportunity to go back over elementary grammar points and do expansion drills. For example, Lesson 2 readings include honorific expressions not studied at the elementary level, and learners can more easily navigate the readings if they first go over those honorific expressions in the Brush-ups. When time is limited, the Brush-ups can be assigned as homework or the class can do the comprehension check at the beginning and then just review the grammar points that need reinforcement. One idea for the onomatopoeic expressions and katakana loanwords in 上級へのチャレンジ (QUARTET 2) is to do a project where learners look for examples in everyday life and categorize them.

The 漢字チャレンジ (both volumes) can be used in between other class activities to do brief (around 15 minutes) oral reviews of kanji studied, and the kanji that didn't get reviewed can be assigned as homework. Also, introducing the learners to strategies on the parts of kanji, such as the phonetic components and radicals, can help them to recall forgotten words/kanji and to infer the meaning and readings of new ones.

The Reading Strategies can be used not only for the current lesson, but also to ask the learners about the content of readings in later lessons, so as to reinforce their understanding through repetition. For example, the questions could focus on strategies for understanding sentence structure (noun modification, emphatic constructions, etc.) or the connections between sentences (demonstratives, adverbs/conjunctions indicating order, etc.).

How can I help my learners transition from the reading material in QUARTET 1 to that in QUARTET 2?

All the readings in QUARTET 1 were specifically created for the textbook. However, the QUARTET 2 readings were mostly taken from real life, and so many learners may find them harder to tackle. In order to help learners more smoothly transition, consider starting to phase in real-life readings from around Lesson 4 of QUARTET 1. For example, after doing Reading 2 in Lesson 6, you could do a group activity in which the learners read a real-life newspaper article about the same topic (early English language education). Here, you could also include learning strategies such as skimming to grasp the gist of the article, scanning to look for specific information, and inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words from their context. You can make real-life readings more accessible to the learners if you choose topics that interest them or are things that they are already knowledgeable about. Another strategy for motivating learners is to follow up their reading of real-life material with output opportunities such as having them explain the reading in their own words or discussing it as a group.

We have different instructors for each skill area. Any suggestions on how to successfully teach with this approach?

It's vital that each instructor also be familiar with the material for the skills they don't teach. One way to do this is to have teacher meetings in which the course leader goes over the connections among the different skill areas. For example, both Reading 1 and Listening Comprehension 1 in Lesson 6 deal with the same topic (garbage sorting), so after the learners do the reading, the listening comprehension instructor could warm them up by touching upon the content of the reading. Highlighting the connections between the two sides in this way would help consolidate the vocabulary studied and activate the learners' schemata. See the Teacher's Guide for charts showing the relationships among different sections (the first page for each lesson in Chapter 3).

Another important thing to do is to also make the learners aware of how everything ties together — particularly, how the activities they are doing now relate to ones already completed and ones that will be done later. For example, when introducing the expressions in 読みのストラテジー(９) for stating opinions, inform the learners that those expressions will also be used later in the Writing section's exercise for writing a letter to the editor. Then, when going over 書くポイント in the Writing section, remind the learners that the expressions were studied in 読みのストラテジー.

Can QUARTET be used at schools other than universities or for private lessons?

The readings are designed to be of interest to Japanese learners in general, not just college students. The conversations mainly center on situations pertaining to university life, but the roles/situations can be changed to ones relatable to non-university learners when doing role-playing activities.

In the case of classes with limited time, instructors should be sure to do the 読む material during class, as this introduces the target grammar, expressions, words, and kanji of each lesson, and to provide learners with output opportunities regarding what they studied.

As private lessons afford more time for instructor-learner interactions, the lesson time can be more efficiently used if the readings and grammar patterns/expressions material are assigned as prep work. Then, during lesson time, the instructor can check the learner's understanding of what they studied and provide output opportunities such as discussion of the readings and practice using the grammar patterns/expressions. The workbook serves as a good resource for output activities, particularly the composition exercise in 文型・表現ワークBまとめの練習, and 文型・表現ワーク C口頭練習 (QUARTET 1 only).

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Classroom instruction time and approach

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