I took Japanese 312 with Marken Sensei in the fall of 2022.

This class was held on Tuesday and Thursdays.

This class was focused on reading and writing, but we also had a lot of opportunity for speaking practice.

Tadoku / Reading Reports

One of are projects this class was to read a story then to report on it in English then in Japanese as best we could, in our own words. It gave me a visual for the words I’d learned while reading! Reporting on what I read in both languages let me think about what I read, thenstreatch my writing skills to explaint he story again in Japanese. I will be trying to keep up this practice in my self study!

Reading and Writing Practice

This was very good writing practice because we were supposed to write a lot, and use new grimmer phrasing. I really felt that by the end I had improved, even if it was hard to tell while I was in the midst of doing the activity. Looking back after the fact, I feel like I was finding my own way of writing.

Talk Abroad

We used Talked abroad to have 2, 30 minute conversations with a partner from the platform. I Spoke with Kaori-san for both activities.

We first had to pick a topic to talk about, then we were to write a word map to map out key words, and or phrases that we think we might need. We were allowed to use the same topic both times to see how we had improved in out ability to talk about it.

We then reviewed our ability, as well as one peer’s audio.

In-Class Writing

More writing practice, but we were on a time limit in class, and we weren’t supposed to use a dictionary.

Group Journal

This was a very fun exercise! We got to write with Japanese students in a casual way. It was really helpful for learning, but also very fun! I was in Group B. My favorite week was week 5. I enjoyed using both English and Japanese to communicate simultaneously.