Major Learning Outcome 5: Cultural Internalization and Language Immersion
Outcome:
Students demonstrate that they have actively immersed themselves in authentic Japanese cultural and linguistic environments and have internalized the language and cultural experience, from which they have developed a personal understanding and new perspectives of the community.
Reflective Narrative:
For one year I studied abroad in Nagoya, Japan, where I took various Japanese language courses, taught in Japanese; as well as Japanese culture courses. Taking courses taught in Japanese, with a teacher that barely understood any English, was certainly a challenge for me in the beginning. After the first month or two, having begun to get accustomed to the fact that everyone spoke Japanese, not English, it began to get easier for me. When I went to the store everything would be written in Japanese, with no translations and no one to ask for help in English; at restaurants I would have to order in Japanese; and if I wanted to go anywhere by bus or train, I would have to decipher the schedules and routes. After a year of this, however, I was able to do it without even thinking about it.
To help this process along, I joined a couple of clubs for a short time. First I tried out the badminton club. I had played before in my hometown and enjoyed it, so it seemed like a good place to start. Most of the members I interacted with were freshman and did not know any English yet. As my Japanese was still very poor at this point, this posed some problems as far as having conversations and developing friendships. I ran into the same issue when I tried out the iado club. Although a couple of the older members knew a little English, I had to primarily rely upon my Japanese skills to communicate with the other members. In both scenarios, this was a challenge at first. Especially with iado, as it is a martial art unique to Japan and completely new to me. There were many formalities and customs involved, and I had to make sure to understand them all despite not fully understanding what people were saying. After a little while, however, I was able to successfully communicate with the members and develop an understanding of the sport as well as develop friendships among the members.
As I was going through these experiences, I was of course taking many pictures to help me remember the great times I had. These pictures also served to help create the LESCANT Flickr project, in which CSUMB exchange students in Japan took pictures of their experiences and applied one of seven concepts: Language, Environment, Social Structure, Context, Authority, Non-verbal, and Time. Exchange students would apply one of these labels to one of their pictures, and briefly explain how they believe the picture reflects that concept. This gave me a structured way in which to think critically about my year abroad in Japan and helped me to better appreciate my experience.
I had initially experienced great anxiety at times at not being able to understand what was being said around me or not being able to successfully convey what I wanted to say. By the end of my year abroad, however, I had long since gotten over such anxiety and felt very comfortable with speaking in Japanese, even if I did often make mistakes still. Getting over that anxiety garnered confidence in myself not only as a student studying Japanese, but as an individual in society.
Evidence:
LESCANT Flickr Project
Students demonstrate that they have actively immersed themselves in authentic Japanese cultural and linguistic environments and have internalized the language and cultural experience, from which they have developed a personal understanding and new perspectives of the community.
Reflective Narrative:
For one year I studied abroad in Nagoya, Japan, where I took various Japanese language courses, taught in Japanese; as well as Japanese culture courses. Taking courses taught in Japanese, with a teacher that barely understood any English, was certainly a challenge for me in the beginning. After the first month or two, having begun to get accustomed to the fact that everyone spoke Japanese, not English, it began to get easier for me. When I went to the store everything would be written in Japanese, with no translations and no one to ask for help in English; at restaurants I would have to order in Japanese; and if I wanted to go anywhere by bus or train, I would have to decipher the schedules and routes. After a year of this, however, I was able to do it without even thinking about it.
To help this process along, I joined a couple of clubs for a short time. First I tried out the badminton club. I had played before in my hometown and enjoyed it, so it seemed like a good place to start. Most of the members I interacted with were freshman and did not know any English yet. As my Japanese was still very poor at this point, this posed some problems as far as having conversations and developing friendships. I ran into the same issue when I tried out the iado club. Although a couple of the older members knew a little English, I had to primarily rely upon my Japanese skills to communicate with the other members. In both scenarios, this was a challenge at first. Especially with iado, as it is a martial art unique to Japan and completely new to me. There were many formalities and customs involved, and I had to make sure to understand them all despite not fully understanding what people were saying. After a little while, however, I was able to successfully communicate with the members and develop an understanding of the sport as well as develop friendships among the members.
As I was going through these experiences, I was of course taking many pictures to help me remember the great times I had. These pictures also served to help create the LESCANT Flickr project, in which CSUMB exchange students in Japan took pictures of their experiences and applied one of seven concepts: Language, Environment, Social Structure, Context, Authority, Non-verbal, and Time. Exchange students would apply one of these labels to one of their pictures, and briefly explain how they believe the picture reflects that concept. This gave me a structured way in which to think critically about my year abroad in Japan and helped me to better appreciate my experience.
I had initially experienced great anxiety at times at not being able to understand what was being said around me or not being able to successfully convey what I wanted to say. By the end of my year abroad, however, I had long since gotten over such anxiety and felt very comfortable with speaking in Japanese, even if I did often make mistakes still. Getting over that anxiety garnered confidence in myself not only as a student studying Japanese, but as an individual in society.
Evidence:
LESCANT Flickr Project