In this study, we examine Japanese courses centered on collaborative activities as a part of teaching practice of Japanese as a second language (JSL) program in a university.As JSL classes consist of diverse participants from different languages and cultures, they can be considered to be small multicultural communities. JSL classes as spaces of learning by collaborative activities with participants from diverse cultural backgrounds have shown to foster the ability in three key competence categories. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the trainees' consciousness and awareness changed through planning and managing the JSL course as an intercultural collaborative learning program.

In trying to developing individuals who can contribute to a successful life and a wellfunctioning society in a global society, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) proposed Key Competencies as a framework. It identified three categories:(1)Using tools interactively(including language, knowledge and technology),(2)Interacting in heterogeneous groups (relating to others, empathy, collaboration,and managing and resolving conflicts), and (3) Acting autonomously (seeing the big picture, planning and project management, and asserting rights, interests, limits and needs). Based on these key competencies, educational objectives with new concepts of abilities for Japan were developed, such as “shakaijin kisoryoku" by METI (Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry), and “ikiru chikara" by MEXT (Ministry of Education,Culture, Sports, Science and Technology).

These new concepts of abilities focus on the process of finding problems and solving them collaboratively with others, valuing thinking and making judgments independently and taking responsibility for their actions. These competencies are developed bycollaborative learning which affords dialogue rather than by traditional teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization.

Qualitative data from descriptive questionnaire conducted before and after the experiment was analyzed using the text mining technique. We categorized keywords extracted by the text mining technique first, and then created web graphs of co-occurrence concepts (keywords). Finally, we compared the graphs of before and after. Also, descriptions of diary entries written by trainees during the experiment were added, the trainees were practice to collaborate with the extracted concepts.

Before this experiment, the trainees were convinced that the purpose of the course is to develop Japanese learners' Japanese communication skills, but in the process of the collaborative activities to achieve the goal with the Japanese learners, most of the trainees changed. They started to think that Japanese communication skills are required both of the Japanese learners and themselves and both of them learn a lot from each other.Experiencing that fellow learners and trainees learn through collaborative practice,trainees became conscious of the learners' diverse and rich abilities and as a result, the trainees' mentalities of the relationship between trainees and learners changed.