Why did I choose Japanese Language and Culture as my Major? Having began studying Japanese when I was a freshman in high school, I knew as a senior that I wanted to continue studying Japanese. Initially I had decided to start studying Japanese simply because I was required to take a foreign language course, but eventually I came to become genuinely interested in both the culture and language. Because of this, I decided to become a Japanese Language and Culture major at CSUMB. One of the most attractive aspects of the major was MLO 5: Cultural Internalization and Language Immersion, which would enable me to study abroad as part of a major requirement needed to graduate. I knew that studying abroad would help me improve my Japanese substantially, which was important to me as I knew that I would want to work in Japan as an English teacher for sometime, and then later become a high school Japanese teacher in the future. I knew that by choosing to major in Japanese Language and Culture, I would be able to learn everything necessary in order to become a knowledgeable teacher.
What have I learned from this major? What was my initial goal and how has that changed? MLO 1: Language and Communication andMLO 2: Japanese Culture also helped me to make my goal of becoming a teacher more feasible as I was taught me about all aspects of Japanese culture. Courses that fulfil the MLO 1 requirement such as JAPN 303: Business Japanese helped me to better understand proper Japanese manners through skits and practicing writing business documents (see here). On the other hand, JAPN 306: The Japanese Mind, taught me about the complexities of Japanese society and inter-personal relationships. An example of one of these complexities would be the concept of kawaii, which I actually dedicated a presentation to (pdf). The information that I learned will be useful as I adjust to living and working in Japan, and allow me to immerse into my environment a lot more quickly.
What areas am I most proud of through learning in this program? Through this program, I am most proud of having improved my Japanese abilities enough to have been able to complete my Capstone project. The project tested a wide set of my skills: having to read Japanese sources of information, creating the Japanese powerpoint, writing the Japanese final paper, presenting our information in Japanese, and even listening to our classmates' Japanese presentations as well. Aside from Japanese however, I am glad that I had an opportunity to learn more about my own culture as a Mexican-American through MLO 3: Secondary Culture. To fulfill that requirement, I enrolled into the SPAN 308: HIST/CULTR AZTLAN:SW US that covered all aspects of hispanic culture. It was interesting for me to learn about hispanic culture, especially because California has a large hispanic community. When I studied abroad, a lot of the information that I had learned in this course was useful because not many Japanese people are familiar with Mexican-American culture. When I return to Japan again through the JET Program, I am sure that what I learned in this course will be useful again.
What areas do I want to develop in the future? In preparation for the Capstone project, we were introduced to research method skills through courses that fulfilled MLO 4: Research and Technology. These skills are something that I would like to develop more in the future as I will be living in Japan and would have the opportunity to use many information sources that are not available in the United States. In JAPN 404: Advanced Japanese for Presentational Communication, we were taught techniques that would enable us to better read and understand Japanese reading materials and also charts and graphs. As I live in Japan, if I were to become more comfortable with using these techniques, it would be helpful as I read authentic newspapers or scholarly sources. On the other hand, what I learned in JAPN 403: Pre-Capstone was helpful as we were taught how to conduct proper and academic research in English by taking advantage of the resources available at CSUMB such as the library database. I have plans to return to CSUMB to complete the teaching credential and graduate program, so further familiarizing myself with these resources would be detrimental to my future studies. I plan to develop these areas by continuing to practice the skills that were taught in my classes and continue to search for other methods that would improve my abilities even more.