MLO 1: Japanese Language and Communication 1.1 Students are able to communicate effectively in Japanese in three modes: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational; and in a culturally appropriate manner in a variety of social and professional settings and circumstances at the Intermediate-High level of language proficiency, according to the ACTFL Guidelines. 1.2 Students gain competency in the Japanese language and linguistics including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse. Students compare, contrast, and analyze the structural differences between Japanese and English.
Courses that meet this MLO: JAPN 301, , JAPN 302, JAPN 320s, JAPN 380, JAPN 404, Study Abroad Classes
Reflective Narrative: I started learning Japanese in community college in 2010 and stopped around 2013. I transferred to CSUMB in 2017 and was really scared when taking my first Japanese language course in 4 years. The feeling of the courses here at CSUMB were completely different from what I had experienced before, in a good way. The first Japanese course I took was JAPN 302: History of Japan with Dr. Shigeko Sekine. It was a huge jump start on my unused Japanese language skills but Dr. Sekine encouraged me throughout the semester and helped me make it to the next semester. The next Japanese course I took was JAPN 301: Advanced Japanese Culture, Language and Communication with Professor Tomoko Ogaki. This was my first language focused class at CSUMB and Professor Ogaki made the class very easy to follow and understand. I think my favorite times in class were learning about rakugo and making proper Japanese style haikus. Then I spent a year studying abroad in Japan at Toyo University and took various language courses there and really gave my Japanese language skills a big boost. After returning I took JAPN 320s: Advanced Japanese Service Learning with Dr. Yoshiko Saito-Abbott. In this class we got a glimpse of the other side of learning and learned what it was like teaching simple Japanese. My last semester at CSUMB I took JAPN 380: Japan: Land and People with Dr. Saito-Abbott and JAPN 404: Advanced Japanese for Presentational Communication with Professor Ogaki. In JAPN 380 we spent a lot of time in class making sentences together using various grammar points which was a lot of fun and really let us get creative, Dr. Saito-Abbott really encouraged us to write as much as possible and worry about correcting mistakes afterwards. In JAPN 404 we learned the skills and grammatical structures we would need to create our Japanese capstone projects.