Yesterday was my last formal day of class for JPN 102. A lot has happened to me this semester to influence how I view Japanese as a language and as an academic pursuit, however I’m pleased to say that in the end I’m more serious about it now.
For a number of reasons, including simply having too many performances, I wasn’t able to focus on Japanese like I would have liked to. I feel like now at the end I’m still struggling to produce basic grammar patterns with speed and efficiency in spoken conversation. However I also know from the 2-3 weeks that I was able to do this that repeated trips to office hours per week can drastically improve my fluency very quickly.
As I wrote in an earlier post, I believe speaking with my teachers during office hours is the best way for me to develop my language abilities outside of class. In intermediate Japanese next year I hope to continue with this method of study to improve the goals of the PE exercises. Finally, over the summer I want to find a piece of language software that I can use to maintain my current levels of fluency so that I don’t lose all the progress I’ve made this year.