"Those anime students": Foreign language literacy development through Japanese popular culture.

JAPANESE language education; LITERACY; COLLEGE students; ANIME films; LANGUAGE & culture; JAPANESE animation; POPULAR culture; COMIC books, strips, etc.; JAPANESE fantasy fiction; MANGA (Art)

UNITED States; JAPAN

The article offers a look at American university and college students who are ambitious about learning foreign languages due to their appreciation for Japanese popular culture in the form of anime, Japanese animation, and manga, Japanese graphic novels. The author presents the results of interviews with Japanese instructors and students of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) in the southern United States. Charts are presented that show different forms of media represented by the term anime and the differences between anime and United States animation. The author gives several advantages for JFL literacy development through anime.