Classes in Nagoya University (About MEXT Scholarship - Japanese Studies (2))

Hello, nice to see you again~

As per my previous post, I'm going to talk about my classes here in Japan. First of all, my course name is 'Intensive Course in Advanced Japanese' or 日本語・日本文化研修コース (or, as they like to call it, １年コース). We have a total of 16 periods from Monday to Friday (3 periods each day, with the exception of Wednesday with 4 periods). Each period lasts for 90 minutes.



Now, as I mentioned in my previous post, only 5 periods out of these 16 are not about Japanese Language. They are 1 教義科目 (basically an International Culture Exchange Class) and 4 入門講義 (Japanese Linguistics, Linguistics, Japanese Culture, Japanese Literature). 教義科目 is compulsory, but we can pick  3-4 of the 入門講義. I picked all, because honestly I love literature but my main focus is still linguistics. I only took Japanese Culture only because my schedule wouldn't be convenient if I didn't.

教義科目 is an interesting class, I must admit. It's a class consisting of Japanese students and foreign students. Not only students of my course, the other students from NUPACE also join this class. The class activity is mainly group discussion, where we are given some problem and we need to figure out what it means in each of our culture. From different cultures come different point of view, and it helps to broaden our horizon. (Though there will be group project later. I hate group projects. Can I skip? ;;;;)

 入門講義 is also an international class, except we don't have Japanese here. Like, NUPACE students, my course students, and I don't know the others but there are no Japanese.

In Japanese Linguistics, we mainly talk about 品詞 (word class). It's something I've studied before so it's no biggie (and maaaaaybeeeeee a bit boring) but as this goes in depth about each word class, I guess it does improve my knowledge.

Meanwhile in Linguistics, we talk about what linguistics is and what field it covers. The lecturer especially likes to hear about our languages, where it differs and where it has a special trait, so this class is interesting for me. I love learning new languages afterall. I've heard about Chinese, Korean, Russian, Maldives. And of course, Indonesian, Javanese, and Sundanese.

Japanese Literature is so far my favorite class. We talk about... well, Japanese literature. Started out from (arguably) the oldest, the 万葉集, we go over several popular poems and the meaning. I'm not very well-versed in poems, much less those in Japanese, very much less in old Japanese, so listening to the lecturer's energetic lesson about each poem is really enlightening. The lecturer has deep passion for poems and literature so it's always refreshing to listen how she gushes about "ah, the romance" "ah, so heart-wrenching" "ah, the lines are so beautiful".

My least favorite class is... Japanese Culture. I'm sorry but I just can't enjoy this kind of class ;;;;; The lecturer himself is okay, and we mainly learn about Japanese by watching films/documentaries, but? I just? Not my field. I think I'll skip this class next semester ;;;;;

By the way, all of the forementioned classes are conducted in Japanese. Full Japanese. There was once a Chinese student in Japanese Linguistics class and she couldn't even understand what the lecturer say when he's taking attendance, and he just said, "出て行ってください". Hoo boy. It's no wonder we need to have at least N2 JLPT certificate to enroll here.

Allright, now let's talk about the main thing. The Japanese class. Well, of course this is also conducted in Japanese, duh. The schedule changes every week so there's no definite pattern (we are given a new schedule every two weeks) but basically there are:

• 文法
• 上級文法 (N1 level)
• 聞く練習
• 会話
• 読解 (there are newspapers, excerpt from books, or books itself)
• 漢字テスト (we don't have any lesson about kanji. We only have the book to self-study and get a test every week for 4-5 chapters. Score below 90% needs to retake the test. I know, crazy standard, right?)
• 復習クイズ (basically a set of questions about everything we learned in one week, from grammar, expressions, to conversations)
• 試験 (conducted every two weeks (or every three chapters). there are paper test and oral test.)
• 作文
• 特別講義 (history of Kanji, introduction to Japanese dictionaries, how to take interviews.... I don't know what else is gonna come)
• スピーチ (it is said that each person is scheduled to have 2-3 speeches througout the year. I've had one.)
• a new one is 情報伝達. I don't know how often this will appear. this is basically dokkai plus speech, because we are required to make a presentation about something we read (my current case, a newspaper article).

The first five are more like the regular classes, with an addition of 復習クイズ and 漢字テスト. The others are sporadical.

Other than this, there are gonna be reports but I don't know about them in details, so maybe I'll make a post whining about them when they comes. For now, these are all I can say. I hope this makes a good reference for anyone interested in Nagoya University for this program!

 [edit 11/11/2016]
There are at least two things I would like to clarify!

First about  情報伝達. It's a one-time event, apparently. BUT there will be more projects like this, where we are required to make some kind of presentation. We still don't know what else is gonna come, though.

Second, I wrote "how to take interviews" in 特別講義, that's because in my schedule it's written 面接. I just assumed that it's gonna be a lecture about how to take Japanese-style interviews, but it turned out it was a real interview. Just a small one, where the lecturer ask us about our condition after one month in Japan.