My Study Notes
Reflection
This school semester was the most challenging and busying for me. This affected my work habits for all my classes, especially Japanese. Upon realizing this, I understood the importance of balancing out all due assignments and working on them as early as possible to not fall behind, and to study ahead of the class to not feel unprepared and overwhelmed. With Japanese, I’m proud of the effort I put into my projects, and the amount of time I spent studying the unit, namely kanji. I could farther improve by studying outside of class and looking at the upcoming units before hand. I could do this by borrowing a textbook, or asking the teacher about what to expect.
Core Competencies
Some skills I have developed to improve my creative activities are better note taking. I’ve learned that ideal learning doesn’t come from writing the teacher’s notes in my own notebook, and trying to memorize that, but by putting the notes into my own words, and by teaching it to my peers, I can better prepare for assignments and tests to come.
I appreciate feedback on my video projects, and prefer it comes in the form of what instead of saying what I did well, I would appreciate a farther emphasis on what I can improve for next time.
Some long term goals for myself include being able to maintain sub fluent conversation with a local or Japanese-fluent person. My plan to achieve that is to watch videos of people talking to each other, learning the sentences structures and mannerisms that are in those conversations, and applying it by talking to someone who is strong in Japanese.
Going Farther…
Japanese will always be something I will remember, as one of my biggest interests include manga and anime. The time I spent over the years learning this language was very enjoyable, and I may look into a course later in university or outside.
If I could go back in time to my first day in this class, I would tell myself to not put the focus on memorizing, but rather emphasize the understanding of it; every sentence and grammar point, and see how it can be related to English sentences and grammar. I would also underline the importance of managing time for studying and time for completing homework, as one major issue I faced early on was being overwhelmed, which greatly got in the way with my learning.