JAPN 301: Advanced Japanese Culture, Language and Communication
This course continues to develop advanced level Japanese competency through further acquisition of Japanese cultural knowledge on a variety of fields and disciplines in content-based instruction. Taught in Japanese.
My Experience
This course was my first step into the world of intermediate Japanese. It was also the first course in which I learned Japanese by not only focusing on the grammar and language itself, but also through culture as a learning tool. This class focused on presenting previously learned knowledge through tests and presentations. Some of the topics covered include: Japanese History, Japanese Food, Haiku, and Manga/Anime. this course helped advance my language skills and pushed them into the pre-intermediate level before I studied abroad in Japan. My biggest take-away is simply a reinforcing of my fundamental Japanese knowledge, but this class also served as a "maiden voyage" in my non-language Japanese education received in Japanese. This was a challenge initially, but the class was broken into two informal sections of language education and culture education. These often built upon each other and centered around greater theme. The themes ranged from traditional Japanese foods to school life to rakugo, traditional Japanese comedic storytelling.
This class marked my graduation from repetitive learning to expressive learning within my Japanese language learning. In previous classes, I was often tasked with memorization and repetition to create a firm understanding of the basics of the language. However, 301 allowed for more opportunities to use Japanese in a more expressive manner and I began to focus on creating "my" Japanese. I always wanted to use Japanese in a way that was more than scoring high on a proficiency test (though that was a goal of mine). I always wanted to grasp a knowledge of Japanese that allowed me to tell stories or create narratives with the capability to entice people. While that may still remain out of reach, this class afforded me the first step towards that life goal.
Assignments in this consisted of worksheets, with frequent oral performances and presentations. This was also the first class that required me to type in Japanese, but the assignments were small and infrequent.
This class marked my graduation from repetitive learning to expressive learning within my Japanese language learning. In previous classes, I was often tasked with memorization and repetition to create a firm understanding of the basics of the language. However, 301 allowed for more opportunities to use Japanese in a more expressive manner and I began to focus on creating "my" Japanese. I always wanted to use Japanese in a way that was more than scoring high on a proficiency test (though that was a goal of mine). I always wanted to grasp a knowledge of Japanese that allowed me to tell stories or create narratives with the capability to entice people. While that may still remain out of reach, this class afforded me the first step towards that life goal.
Assignments in this consisted of worksheets, with frequent oral performances and presentations. This was also the first class that required me to type in Japanese, but the assignments were small and infrequent.