Ideal Japanese Class for Taiwanese High School Students: A Gender Comparison

Abstract

Learning Japanese has become very common amongst Taiwanese high school and university students, ranking the
second most sought for language. A concise study of the likeable activities in a typical language class for the
Taiwanese students seems to be quite useful. Therefore, the present study has concentrated on the senior high school
students’ opinion about the ideal Japanese class. Subjects in this research were 478 students (181 boys, and 297 girls)
in nine private schools in three counties. The instrument was a 10-item multiple-choice Chinese questionnaire based
on Littlewood (2010). The findings illustrated that females and males had similar opinions concerning the
communicative language activities in an ideal Japanese class. They revealed much more differences related to
non-communicative activities, though. Moreover, both boys and girls displayed the highest interest in a relaxed class
atmosphere, and the lowest interest in the usage of smartphones in the activities in the class.