Shiira.Shiira

Yesterday was our last “Introduction to Japanese II” class at the University.  It came with some mixed emotion.  A little melancholy because an [epic] era was coming to an end but a little joy about not having to drive round trip 3 hours every Saturday.

If you’ve read anything in this blog so far, you’ll know I whined a little while back about how this particular class started out as  a “literal” study in “Introductory” — covering the same old same that every class before it had covered.  I’m not sure if the “powers that be” somehow got hold of that post, but the next week we jumped from “Introductory” to “Whoa, what the heck!”.

I liked that, though.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with this class was there was really no indication of who would be taking it before it actually began.  Since there was nothing to tell the instructor what levels she would be dealing with, she just went with what she knew would work: More Introductory.  As a result, the pace at first was pretty slow and repetitive.  As some of us [okay...me] became frustrated with the slowness, she began to speed it up.

The side effect of that speed change, however, was a dead sprint towards the end of the class instead of a nice, even flow of material.  I hope the University will figure out a better system for the next set of classes if they are offered.  So far, no one knows the future of this program and even if it were to continue, I’m not so sure I could partake –time and gas permitting.

Some things I’d like to see in the next set of classes, though, are …

• Instructor, please have clear goals and expectations of the outcome of the class.  A curriculum would be nice whether it be based on a text or proprietary material.
• Sensei, understand there will always be gaps in ability among your students.  Perhaps conducting the class in breakouts would help:  30-45 minutes of Introductory stuff, 30-45 minutes of Intermediate stuff and for the fun of it, use the sink or swim method and throw some really hard stuff out there the last 15 minutes of class.  The difficult things encourage us as students to set goals and promotes a desire in us to learn well enough to be able to accomplish the hard stuff.
• Administrators, think outside the box and stop relying on the students you already have.  Promote, promote, promote!  Move into the next century and explore some creative options.

• Try a mixutre of face-to-face meetings coupled with online gatherings (think Edufire dot com).
• How about a “prize” at the end of the session, like a 4-6 week class that ends with a trip to an authentic Japanese restaurant so your students can order in Japanese?
• Speaking of restaurants, how about a “field trip” or two?  Going to a Japanese restaurant or grocery store to use language skills in the real world… huh, huh… whadya say?
• How about tapping into the young people who are interested in manga and anime?  How come you don’t have a booth at the only anime convention held in this area?  You’re missing a whole demographic, eh?

Anyway, those are just a few things I’ve been going over in my mind.  But who am I?  I’m just some lowly student looking for my next Japanese language “fix”.