Week 2 Blog 4
My daughter took Japanese for two years and I
remember practicing with her and how frustrated she would get with me on pronunciation
and my lack of quick progress. I know about
three words in Japanese and I recognize about two symbols. I first started by looking at an article from
a Japanese Newspaper online. With no
pictures I did not recognize one symbol and I had no idea what the article was
even titled or about.
I decided to make
sure I added pictures to my search so I looked for a magazine article and I was
a bit more successful, I know it had to do with a Japanese Music Band. 
Finally, I decided that a “How to book,” that
was for younger students, would be more appropriate for my ability.
The book Learning Japanese
Bojutsu by photos and pictures (New Edition) by hatsumi
masaaki. BÅjutsu, I had prior knowledge of was the part of martial
arts using a “staff.” Doing this
activity I realized how scary and difficult it would be to
be surrounded by books, magazines, or newspapers that I couldn’t understand the
language.
Japanese/Niponggo is indeed a difficult language to learn because it doesn't use letters or the alphabet. Instead, it uses pictograms. However, many second language learners feel the same way as you did when you attempted to decipher what those characters meant.
ReplyDeleteYour right, this activity does put it in perspective, even the overwhelming anxiety looking at those characters.
ReplyDeleteI like how you broke your search down to include visuals and you proved that once visuals are included a student or learner can be much more successful. I think that this is something we see in the classroom with all of our students everyday. I know my best planned lessons include lots of visuals, realia and even music/sound!
ReplyDelete