ScheduleWhen the second semester had begun, there was still an orientation (returning students only had to attend to part of it), where we learned about the semester's available classes. My choice in Japanese classes was pretty self-explanatory as I would naturally take the following level of language classes. Concerning my electives this time around, I decided to take a couple that could count toward my degree at SDSU and help me get closer to graduation, rather than taking classes that would only count toward my total units and nothing else. My schedule for this semester consisted of 15 units and is posted below: Tuesday: Integrated Japanese, Principles of Economics, Music of Japan and the World Wednesday : Japanese Topic Class, Prospects of Science Thursday: Integrated Japanese, Linguistics 2 Friday: 3rd Year Kanji DescriptionsPrinciples of Economics was what I would think was a standard introductory economics course. The math was very light and mainly focused on vocabulary and concepts. It also had a a small emphasis on international economics and how Japan fit into it.
Music of Japan in the World was somewhat of a history course about the subject matter. It involved learning about the music composition styles ranging from gagaku, and noh to kabuki. We were also required to attend a historical music performance and to help with that, the teacher organized a trip to see a live kabuki show. Prospects of Science had an interesting layout throughout the semester. Each week, there would be a new lecturer from a variety of science departments on campus. They would give a presentation on a topic of their choice to introduce us to a large variety of different application areas related to their discipline. Some examples were making structures to last through tsunamis, or how create a power grid for downtown portions of Yokohama. Linguistics 2 required Linguistics 1 as a prerequisite as it went into in-depth detail on phonetics. This was one of the more difficult courses and there was a proficiency exam to ensure the students had a working knowledge of the basics of phonetics that were taught in the previous semester. All in all, although challenging, I thought this was a very fun class for me as it dealt with some aspect of problem-solving. 3rd Year Kanji was simply that: a kanji course expected for 3rd year students. Because my kanji skills, were not that strong, I took this level course as it was more appropriate for in terms of content. It covered around 500 commonly used kanji, not including kanji expected from previous years. At this level I was expected to be able to read nearly all commonly used kanji. Japanese Topic Class had a main focus on reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. This was accomplished through a variety of means such as multiple speeches throughout the semester and a basic research paper. Although there wasn't that much new material taught in this course, I feel that the assignments and projects really helped me advance my overall skills in Japanese. Integrated Japanese had essentially the same layout as Intensive Japanese the previous semester, expect for meeting one day less a week. The material was rigorous and very dense at times, but I felt that the teachers had a good system for teaching the knowledge in a successful way. Also similar to Intensive Japanese, this course consisted of many assignments, projects, speeches, quizzes, and exams, but at a more difficult level. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorI am Kyle Sablan and I studied abroad at Yokohama National University (YNU) during the 2016-2017 academic year. This blog was created as one of the requirements for receiving the Gilman Scholarship. The purpose of this blog is to share my personal experience with everybody and encourage interest in studying abroad. Archives
April 2018
|