Semester 1 Summary

Well then, I'm going to summarise semester one in weeks so here goes.
Week 1
This is hard thinking back this far and I may go into more detail on what we actually learnt later by looking in my exercise book. Well, I remember meeting one of my future friends right after the first lecture, we were heading to the first tute separately and both ended up going to the right building but up the stairs because we didn't realise there were class rooms on the bottom floor on the outside of the building.... lol anyway, I ended up asking some guy who must work there where the room was and he started explaining, anyway, my friend had caught up on the stairs and it turned out he had no idea where he was going either lol so the guy actually escorted us right to the tute room which was nice. Ended up meeting someone else in the tute that was nice. Can't really remember much after that.

I should probably point out that we had one lecture from 12-1 on tuesday, a tute from 1-2 tuesday, a tute from 8-10 wednesday and a tute from 2-3 on Thursday. Honestly can't remember what happened in the other tutes that week. Things we would have learnt would be the first set of hiragana, maybe the first 15-20? maybe? And all this other basic stuff like, watashi = I, wa = topic marker, senko = major, shigoto = occupation, desu = I don't even know how to explain desu except that you don't say the 'su' like 'sue' but rather you pronounce the word like 'des' without the 'u' oh and if you want to annoy my friend just say desu (with the sue) over and over.

Week 2
Hmmm, well I guess from what I remember I had to learn some more hiragana and kept learning basic things like shigoto wa nan desuka? or senmon wa shinri gaku desu. The first being "what is your occupation?" and the second being "My major is psychology." I guess I should explain how this works.

Let's start with "Shigoto wa nan desuka?" Let's break this sentence down into the separate pieces.
Shigoto = Work/Occupation

Wa = Topic Marker. Wa is what we call in Japanese a 'particle'. Particles are used frequently and have different uses. In this case, Wa is the particle used and marks the topic of the sentence which is 'occupation'. In the Japanese language, Shigoto and Wa would be seen as 'linked' together. As in, if a Japanese person (Nihonjin) was saying this sentence they would almost never stumble and say 'ummm' in the sentence at the point between Shigoto and Wa. They see the two as one word. So they may say "Shigoto wa ummmm" Ummm being "eto" in Japanese.They would never say "Shigoto ummmm Wa". I hope that made some sense

Nan = What? Sometimes what can be said as "nani?" But in this case Nan fits the sentence better. (to be honest if there's a rule on where to use Nan and Nani I don't know it lol)

Desuka = Oh wow, well it's hard to explain. The tutors say desu by itself 'copula' whatever that means. I think Desu more along the lines of Is/Am etc.  Desu also means "Affirmative in the present". The "ka" at the end of desu changes the sentence from being a statement to a question. Without the ka the sentence would no longer be a question. Another example of the use of desu is if you to say "my occupation WAS as a manager at Buy More" which is something that was in the past. Desu in this case would change to deshita. Deshita meaning affirmative (so saying it is true that you were a manager at buy more) and also saying that it was affirmative in the past so if you said this, it would mean that it is no longer true. So you either got fired, quit or promoted.

So, "Shigoto wa nan desuka" is literally in english "Occupation (topic marker) what? Is/Am." or in actual English, "What is your occupation?".

If you can leave a comment saying my explanation was clear or REALLY confusing that'd be great as I'd like feedback in order to improve my posts.

Week 3
I think it was about this time that the tutors were getting us into groups of two for the upcoming oral presentation in week 5 (This group would also be our group for the rest of the presentations in the semester including the "Workshop" in the exam period), we ended up having 3 in our group cause we had an odd number in the class.

Week 4
Well, I'd say about this time my Japanese class mates friends group thing etc was up to a 5 man team, but then one of them told me he was quitting uni so we were down to 4. I hope he's doing alright. This also meant that my oral presentation group was now down to 2 people including myself.

Week 5
ORAL PRESENTATION!!!!! ALERT! I cannot express how much I hate and how nervous I get speaking in front of a group of people. Anyway, I get there a little early today, (Our presentations take place in the 8-10 morning tute on Wednesdays.) so it was a little more painful getting up that day. I got there early and the tutor was asking people what order they wanted to go in. I ended up volenteering to go first as my partner wasn't there yet and I wanted to get it done and dusted. (this was a little before the tute officialy started) Anyway, I saw him getting a coffee so I knew he'd turn up soon. All I can say is, we went up and did it and it was over pretty quickly. It wasn't all that painful afterall but we needed to make sure our script was a little longer next time. I ended up having to read the palm cards a little more than I would have liked and skipped a sentence.... but my friend quickly let me know and we got back on track.... Anyway, the tutors are really kind in the first Japanese course (actually, they're very nice in general) so I ended up getting a distintion for it somehow.

We also had to hand in our language journals for the first time. I was a bit slack on that and it was missing some of the homework sheets we had to complete. The language journals are just exercise book we write in at home which we're supposed to write in at the very least a few days a week. It's just to show that we're learning on our own and keeping up with stuff.

One Week Break
Yay, one week break to study and catch up! NOPE. Sister and her family flew down so I spent the time playing games, doing things with them and completely ignoring my uni studies. Just because I do this does not mean it's good or that I'm saying you should do the same...

Week 6
By the way, if you're confused by Japanese and my above explanations on how the language works know that you're not alone. I think just about everyone sits there in the lectures and tutes just being like, "ummm, sure thing, I understand." When they really don't. I know I don't and I know my friends don't. I'm part way through semester 2 of Japanese and it really hasn't changed. The lecturer speeds through the content and I'm trying to take notes that were from 2 or 3 slides before the current one. In some cases I don't even get it and have to ask the tutor later or discuss it with other people in the class lol. My friend in 2nd year Japanese classes says he still does the same thing and it never changes. All I can say is that if you're studying Japanese, don't hesitate to ask questions about anything you don't understand because most of the other people in the class are in the same boat. Actually, don't be afraid to ask questions in any situation you're in, not just Japanese classes :P. Of course, just because I'm saying this doesn't mean I ask questions haha.

Week 7
I think it was about this week that we had the mock interview which we actually got to do with our presentation partners. The actual interview which would take place in a couple of weeks is where we are interviewed by our tutor individually (without the moral support from our partners). Anyway, luckily most of the questions were directed at my partner first so I had a little more time to form a response. I had a bit of difficulty with some of the questions. I only really remember one of the questions which was about the price of my T-shirt.

Week 8
Still working on our oral assessment for next week. My partner and I have had a habit of trying to look up ways of saying things and words on the net that we can add to our presentation which we really need to stop doing because of the lack of understanding on how to use what we find. Oh well, we've gotten this far but next time I'll make a point of only really using what we've learnt in our classes.

Week 9
Okay, the second oral assessment has arrived. I can't remember much, it came and went. I was nervous then I wasn't. From what I remember I played the part of a shop keeper who had a regular customer/friend or something like that. And my partner pretended to buy things from me. We had a hard time pronouncing some anime names in Japanese, well my partner did at least as he had to say most of them. There one was called the Legend of the Legendary Heroes that was a bit much.

Another thing that happened this week was we all had individual interviews with our tutor and had to answer in Japanese and even try and add to the conversation, of course, all in Japanese. Anyway, that was quite interesting, it was right after our presentations and there wasn't any particular order of who gets interviewed. People just came back from it and said someone else had to go out and get interviewed. I held off for a while but finally got myself to go out there. It was surprisingly easier than I expected as we were all quite scared we wouldn't remember the correct words for the responses.

Week 10
I think it was about this time that one of my friends said he was leaving this semester and coming back maybe next semester to study something else. In a way it was kind of a shock, I knew he said he'd be struggling a bit with Japanese and I think another course but I guess I didn't realise just how much he was struggling. Supposedly there were family issues as well. I keep wondering if I realised how much he was struggling if I could have helped him out more.

Week 11
Well well well, the language journal is due and I haven't written anything in it for the last few weeks, better get started!. Last time I got marked down a bit for not providing any homework sheets in it, that being said, I didn't even do any of the homework that they handed out.... Anyway, this time I'll make sure to do some of the sheets and put them in there. A couple of weeks ago, a couple of us met up outside of uni and studied a bit, I'll cut out those pages and stick them in which should look good for the journal.

Week 12
Oh wow, our language journals are due again. I have to admit I've been a bit slack with the journal lately (as in the past month.) so I've done a lot of catching up posts in the last few days. Please, if you have a language journal, just make sure you're constantly writing posts in it, it only takes 5-15 minutes a day. This lack of entries in the journal are a reminder to me of how long the length of time is between my blog posts. Sorry, I'm try to keep up the posts from now.

Week 13
The Final In Class Oral Assessment has arrived and I haven't done anywhere near enough preparation, oh well. One guy even turned up an hour and a half late and just said "I have no excuse." so yeah.... I'm not too sure if he had any penalties for turning up late. Anyway, like the other oral assessments I looked back on it and was like, "why did I worry so much?". They really aren't that bad overall considering it's only 3-5 minutes and you're interacting with your partner rather than a whole bunch of people. Once you're up there it goes by pretty fast and you wonder if you actually said all your lines. Anyway, classes are over for semester and all that's left is the workshop during exam period.

Study Break Week (14?)
Not much to say here except that yet again, too much playing (world of warcraft) went on and too little studying happened.

EXAM Week (15?)
Well the exam was veeeery interesting. 4 hours (In my and my friends case a little longer, thank you sensei for being lenient lol) which you might think 'OH! 4 HOURS? THAT'S MUST HAVE BEEN HORRIBLE' to be honest, it really wasn't and a large section of it was just watching other people perform their presentations. It was also a very relaxed environment, like we were able to talk to each other during most sections.

The sections in order were the oral presentations, the listening test and the writing task. The writing task was easily the most time consuming. (reason why it was a little longer than 4 hours for me) Somehow I ended up writing something about liking Japanese music to drinking sake straight back to saying I listen to Hikaru Utada, whoever marked it must have thought I was drinking sake writing it. It really only happened because we were running out of time and I was struggling trying to think of something else to add to reach the character number requirement. Anyway, we all had a good laugh at that afterwards.

Well I guess that's it. I've pretty much summarised what went on in semester 1 as far as events go. I think I'll go back sometime soon and add in some things that we learnt. I'll mostly try to cover sentence structure and grammar rather than listing a whole bunch of words. If you want to find out words then there's plenty of online dictionaries which tell you all the Japanese words. I've also got to get started on semester 2 as well! Oh well going over the foundations again will help reinforce my base knowledge which should help me for the rest of semester 2!

Beginning

Well, I just thought that maybe I should blog my studying of Japanese at Uni. The Only bad thing is that I'm already into my second semester. Oh well, gotta start somewhere. I'll do a brief overview of what happened first semester, then my present posts might have a little more detail. Also, sorry if anyone came here thinking it was about a university in Japan lol, I'm sure there are a lot of blogs on the web about that so maybe this will be refreshing and provide some insight into what studying it is like outside of the country.