JAPN 320S - Advanced Japanese SL
This course gives students opportunity to deepen their knowledge of Japanese language and culture through their community service and to develop communication skills through discussions, reflection essays and presentations.
Narrative:
This class is the upper division Service Learning for Japanese majors at California State University Monterey Bay. This course helped me to fulfill MLO1, which is reading, writing, speaking and listening in Japanese because we had to write a site reflection and final essay in Japanese. I think improved my skill and also did presentation in Japanese, that helped me read and speak in Japanese. In addition, we listened to the presentation of other groups and had discussions in class where there were Japanese students.
The course was divided into two parts: in and out of class. In class, we read several articles about globalization and the importance of the foreign language and the difference of service and helping, which made us think critically about the responsibilities we had for teaching the Japanese language and culture. One of the articles that I presented with Melvin made it interesting to know that learning a second language can help even in others subjects that are not related to the language such as math and improving grammar in their own language. Outside of the class, we taught Japanese language and culture to the children at Ord Terrace Elementary School in Seaside. The after school program was hosted through CPY, which is an organization that helps prevent children from getting into trouble, such as gangs, drugs and violence. At the beginning I was very worried about teaching because I never did it before but I became more comfortable when I saw that the children were very interested in learning and welcomed us. We had to make a lesson plan and our group worked very well together to try to make it interesting and fun for the kids. We had different lessons every week, such as greetings, origami, color of the rainbow, and things like that. The end of the Service Learning was very hard because I became very attached to the kids who were always so kind to me.
With the reading discussion and lecture, I learned that teaching a language doesn’t make any sense alone, that it should be connected with culture and also with four outcomes that we learned in this class. These are: (1) Self and Social Awareness, (2) Service and Social Responsibility, (3) Community & Social Justice, (4) Multicultural Community Building/Civic Engagement. At the beginning, I could not understand, or even connect them to the site reflection, however after we discussed it in class, I could understand the importance of them. In this class I learned about social justice and responsibility, since the kids we were teaching are from working class families.
My goal is to further teach the Japanese language and culture, and if possible for the Japanese descendants, in order to let them better understand their ancestor’s society, even though they keep many of the traditions.
This course is different from any other course I have taken at CSUMB or MPC. Although it relates with my previous experience as a volunteer in Guatemala where I spent my time with the kids and their families. If I have the opportunity, I would like to volunteer to keep teaching the kids at Elementary Schools with the experience I have gained in this class.
This class is the upper division Service Learning for Japanese majors at California State University Monterey Bay. This course helped me to fulfill MLO1, which is reading, writing, speaking and listening in Japanese because we had to write a site reflection and final essay in Japanese. I think improved my skill and also did presentation in Japanese, that helped me read and speak in Japanese. In addition, we listened to the presentation of other groups and had discussions in class where there were Japanese students.
The course was divided into two parts: in and out of class. In class, we read several articles about globalization and the importance of the foreign language and the difference of service and helping, which made us think critically about the responsibilities we had for teaching the Japanese language and culture. One of the articles that I presented with Melvin made it interesting to know that learning a second language can help even in others subjects that are not related to the language such as math and improving grammar in their own language. Outside of the class, we taught Japanese language and culture to the children at Ord Terrace Elementary School in Seaside. The after school program was hosted through CPY, which is an organization that helps prevent children from getting into trouble, such as gangs, drugs and violence. At the beginning I was very worried about teaching because I never did it before but I became more comfortable when I saw that the children were very interested in learning and welcomed us. We had to make a lesson plan and our group worked very well together to try to make it interesting and fun for the kids. We had different lessons every week, such as greetings, origami, color of the rainbow, and things like that. The end of the Service Learning was very hard because I became very attached to the kids who were always so kind to me.
With the reading discussion and lecture, I learned that teaching a language doesn’t make any sense alone, that it should be connected with culture and also with four outcomes that we learned in this class. These are: (1) Self and Social Awareness, (2) Service and Social Responsibility, (3) Community & Social Justice, (4) Multicultural Community Building/Civic Engagement. At the beginning, I could not understand, or even connect them to the site reflection, however after we discussed it in class, I could understand the importance of them. In this class I learned about social justice and responsibility, since the kids we were teaching are from working class families.
My goal is to further teach the Japanese language and culture, and if possible for the Japanese descendants, in order to let them better understand their ancestor’s society, even though they keep many of the traditions.
This course is different from any other course I have taken at CSUMB or MPC. Although it relates with my previous experience as a volunteer in Guatemala where I spent my time with the kids and their families. If I have the opportunity, I would like to volunteer to keep teaching the kids at Elementary Schools with the experience I have gained in this class.
lessonplan7.doc |
service_learning_final_presentation__japn_320s_-small.pdf_-_shortcut.lnk |
site_reflection_8.docx |