JAPN302: HISTORY OF JAPAN
Course Description: This course further develops advanced Japanese proficiency through an understanding of Japanese history as a dynamic, interrelated system and employs a variety of processes to identify, analyze and evaluate cultural themes, values and ideas. Students will demonstrate ability to accurately comprehend ideas across a range of historical content. Taught in Japanese.
Meets MLO 1: Japanese Language and Communication
& MLO 2: Japanese Culture
& MLO 2: Japanese Culture
Reflective Narrative:
This course contributed to my fulfillment of these MLO's by teaching about Japanese history in Japanese. At CSUMB, we have two options for culture courses: taught in the target language or taught in English. For this course we used a textbook that taught Japanese history in Japanese. As it was extremely difficult to read, each section had a supplemental kanji section that also described new vocabulary in English. Each chapter went over a different period of time in Japanese history, such as the Edo period or the Muromachi period. I got to learn about Japanese culture in Japanese. Every chapter that I read, I had to do a 300 letter reflection on it, which immensely helped my Japanese grammar and vocabulary. The final presentation I had for this course is my best example of what I had learned in this class. I had to pick a specific era to talk about and discuss how it changed through influence of foreign countries (see Evidence 1). I chose the Muromachi era and introduced how it was influenced, while presenting in Japanese in accordance with MLO's 1 & 2. The knowledge I gained from this course that was significant was how much I learned about Japanese time periods. The vocabulary and grammar points were extremely difficult and this was the first time in my life I had such a hard time understanding Japanese in class-I had finally met a course that matched me. So, being challenged like so was something that improved my Japanese ten-fold. I want to re-read the book in the future and see if I have a better understanding of it than I did before. This was the first culture course I took that was taught in Japanese, so it was a new learning experience. But my goal for the future is to take many more culture courses taught in Japanese to gain a better understanding of the content from a Japanese perspective.
This course contributed to my fulfillment of these MLO's by teaching about Japanese history in Japanese. At CSUMB, we have two options for culture courses: taught in the target language or taught in English. For this course we used a textbook that taught Japanese history in Japanese. As it was extremely difficult to read, each section had a supplemental kanji section that also described new vocabulary in English. Each chapter went over a different period of time in Japanese history, such as the Edo period or the Muromachi period. I got to learn about Japanese culture in Japanese. Every chapter that I read, I had to do a 300 letter reflection on it, which immensely helped my Japanese grammar and vocabulary. The final presentation I had for this course is my best example of what I had learned in this class. I had to pick a specific era to talk about and discuss how it changed through influence of foreign countries (see Evidence 1). I chose the Muromachi era and introduced how it was influenced, while presenting in Japanese in accordance with MLO's 1 & 2. The knowledge I gained from this course that was significant was how much I learned about Japanese time periods. The vocabulary and grammar points were extremely difficult and this was the first time in my life I had such a hard time understanding Japanese in class-I had finally met a course that matched me. So, being challenged like so was something that improved my Japanese ten-fold. I want to re-read the book in the future and see if I have a better understanding of it than I did before. This was the first culture course I took that was taught in Japanese, so it was a new learning experience. But my goal for the future is to take many more culture courses taught in Japanese to gain a better understanding of the content from a Japanese perspective.
Evidence 1: On the right is the script I used for my final presentation in this class about how other countries influenced the Muromachi Period in Japan.
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