Last semester I took the Japanese 311 course. This course focused on speaking in Japanese. For me, this was much needed practice since I tend to tense up and forget my grammar when I begin to speak in Japanese. We worked in small groups to practice using simple phrasing to express ourselves and using aizuchi, or active listening, to let our speaking partners know we were paying attention.

In this course we also watched video clips of Japanese dramas and ads to better our skill at listening to Japanese when spoken at it’s natural quick pace. We had biweekly assignments where we had to rephrase sentences that were spoken in the videos, complete a sentence that was spoken in the video with what we believed was said, and write a short summary of what occurred in the video. Sometimes when completing these assignments, I had to slow down the video to half speed to I could carefully listen to what was said. Completing these assignments truly helped me with my comprehension of the spoken Japanese language.

動画課題-1　夜食_b　Holleman