Japanese Language Classes

Being a small school and coming from a variety of levels of Japanese language ability, Japanese language classes are separated into three levels.

The beginning class includes those who have one semester or less of Japanese, or who have had none at all. Most of the students here are in that class. I don't know much about it, as I'm not in this one, but the book they use is similar to the one for the middle level, as it is in the same series.

The highest level class has only one person in it. He has lived in Japan at least a couple of years and has attended Japanese schools in the past, as well as lived in China for year studying Chinese and also Korean. I don't know anything about his class other than that he is definitely above the level of the rest of us with his language experience.

The middle level includes those who have Japanese language experience in either classes or by having lived here. I am in this class. The other person in my class has lived here a school year, but that was her first year of learning Japanese, so in most ways she is more comfortable with the language and knows some of the ins and outs of actually speaking of it that I don't know yet. I have more book learning and kanji knowledge than practical usage knowledge. We have some similar grammar knowledge, but we've learned from different books, so she has some grammar and vocabulary that I don't, but it goes the same the other way.
I love my class, as we speak Japanese almost entirely, with perhaps one to five words of English at most during the whole two hours of each class period. I also enjoy having just two of us and a teacher, so it is basically a private lesson with a lot of personal attention to what our specific needs are. I'm not used to hearing the Japanese as much, so I sometimes feel kind of lame, but hey...that's what I'm here for most specifically. I can feel that it's working some, and can only hope that it will continue to improve as I'm here. I spend a little too much time doing homework to be out in the community as much as I'd like, interacting in the language, but that is to be expected while attending a university.

The book we use is is pretty good, having all the Japanese in kana and kanji, having a nice dictionary at the end with book specific words, and having English translations for a good deal of the work, so we can understand if we are learning the grammar and structures correctly. There is an accompanying workbook which allows us to reasonably practice the grammar from the lessons, as well as a CD that can be used to listen to the conversations, vocabulary, and also has listening assignments to complete in the workbook. The book has kind of a cheesy story going on throughout it and occasionally has silly vocabulary words like space alien (宇宙人　　うちゅうじん　　uchyuujin) for those who might NEED that word in their Japanese vocabulary. I'm sure I'll use that a LOT in everyday speech or interacting in the community or business...hahah! The cheesy story is probably the only thing that makes me crazy about this book, but it's not bad, just a bit silly and it does serve as a setting where we can comfortably practice conversations with each other.
An online resource is also available for this book with vocabulary lists (although they are already in the book, itself) but also with a quiz section that gives the words in either kana or kanji, and with other features that I haven't really explored yet.