Charles Barkley
TNT Basketball Analyst
- 14 Jun 2007
- 560
- 12
I'm going to weigh in on the language thing and say that:
a) what school and what department and what professor will determine how much japanese you need to or even will be able to use. If your professor tells you you don't need japanese, you probably won't need japanese (to study).
b) the language course, though intense, will not prepare you for 2kyuu, nor is there any realistic hope of getting there within 6 months (unless A] you already know kanji from studying chinese/korean and study exclusively for the test, to the detriment of actually acquiring Japanese skills or B) are a very motivated korean).
Your language course may be attached to a university, in which case it will be on a semester system, and though it says 6 months, it will likely be 3.5 months, on par with a normal semester, meaning that to improve very quickly, it will be incumbent upon you personally to go beyond the scope of your course. The waseda course for beginners, after one semester, puts you somewhere between 4kyuu and 3kyuu.
Another thing is that if you are placed in a dorm, you are likely to be put in a social environment where using Japanese is not entirely necessary and where the lingua franca will be English, at least among graduate students (a split developed here between Japanese language students, or those who came with high level language skills, and those who came without any). Also, as the general expectation for those who do not look asian is that they do or at least can speak english, even if you want to immerse yourself in Japanese, it can be a battle. I am borderline 1kyuu level myself, and keeping the conversation in Japanese, even if it is the stronger shared language, can be a battle.
But you'll see what I mean...
PS: I don't mean to discourage anyone. Just keep the expectations realistic. The curve of language improvement seems exponential (until you reach a certain level anyway) rather than linear, so the jump between 6 months and 1 year, or from 1 year to 1.5 years, is probably much greater than the first 6 months. That's why coming over with something, anything, in terms of language skills, is, in my mind, so important.
a) what school and what department and what professor will determine how much japanese you need to or even will be able to use. If your professor tells you you don't need japanese, you probably won't need japanese (to study).
b) the language course, though intense, will not prepare you for 2kyuu, nor is there any realistic hope of getting there within 6 months (unless A] you already know kanji from studying chinese/korean and study exclusively for the test, to the detriment of actually acquiring Japanese skills or B) are a very motivated korean).
Your language course may be attached to a university, in which case it will be on a semester system, and though it says 6 months, it will likely be 3.5 months, on par with a normal semester, meaning that to improve very quickly, it will be incumbent upon you personally to go beyond the scope of your course. The waseda course for beginners, after one semester, puts you somewhere between 4kyuu and 3kyuu.
Another thing is that if you are placed in a dorm, you are likely to be put in a social environment where using Japanese is not entirely necessary and where the lingua franca will be English, at least among graduate students (a split developed here between Japanese language students, or those who came with high level language skills, and those who came without any). Also, as the general expectation for those who do not look asian is that they do or at least can speak english, even if you want to immerse yourself in Japanese, it can be a battle. I am borderline 1kyuu level myself, and keeping the conversation in Japanese, even if it is the stronger shared language, can be a battle.
But you'll see what I mean...
PS: I don't mean to discourage anyone. Just keep the expectations realistic. The curve of language improvement seems exponential (until you reach a certain level anyway) rather than linear, so the jump between 6 months and 1 year, or from 1 year to 1.5 years, is probably much greater than the first 6 months. That's why coming over with something, anything, in terms of language skills, is, in my mind, so important.
