Notes

DISCUSS MA/BA/UCHI-SOTO -> culture



5 It's made life a lot easier to say the least. I never had any emergency situations, but by having to go to the city office, tax office, phone store, and so on, I've needed to use Japanese with the staff. The English support is not always available, so I often have to handle those official matters in Japanese. Knowing the language has helped me teach my clients smoothly, and it has helped me get to know the Japanese staff I work with. Not knowing the language would make life more lonely and altogether more difficult. Friends of mine refused to learn the language, and it's made them rely entirely on those who do understand the language. It's a burden for all to say the least.



6 I'd say it's similar to the above answer. I've been able to make more friends, handle work smoothly, and live without needing to rely entirely on others. I would say that it has probably had a deeper impact as well. It's opened me up to new knowledge, and I would claim it has helped the development of my brain. I generally am more analytical, so it's certainly helped my social skills by making me talk to people I normally wouldn't talk to. At first, I wanted to learn Japanese because I thought it was a cool language. To learn it, I needed to speak to more people, and that helped my skills. As my skills got better, I could talk to more people and keep learning more. I believe it can also benefit those who are less analytical. The language has patterns that you have to learn and rules that need to be followed which would then help with analytical skills.



7 I would certainly enjoy learning another language. The only thing holding me back is "time" and a "need". I learn best in classrooms, but I don't have much time to go to a language school. I also would like to learn more languages, but I don't have a drive to learn any specific one at this moment.



8 When I say, "I learn best in classrooms", I mean that classrooms are the best way for me to learn the rules and correct usage of the different words/phrases. The teacher won't be afraid to tell you that your meaning is strange or just plain wrong. I feel that classrooms are necessary to become accurate, but I would say that cultural immersion is how you become fluent. I wouldn't have learned many of the things I know if I had not talked to people outside the classroom. More specifically, any client I have that goes overseas will see a much larger improvement than in the classroom. They will find that they need the language, and that need will help them improve quickly. It could be because they have many meetings, clients, coworkers, and so on. They will find a need and they will improve quicker. By living in the target country, they will be surrounded by the language more, so they will be able to passively take in parts of the language as well.

9 My biggest struggle was mainly with French. I had the difficulty of translating in my head the entire time. I had to learn to do it differently with Japanese. My Japanese class started with the teacher using 100% Japanese*. If there was any confusion, she might use English or she might have some English on a power-point to explain some grammar. By doing that, we were forced to start thinking in Japanese and connect what we see to what we think. There wasn't much English. When there was new vocabulary, I struggled with remembering it quickly, but I thought back to Psychology class. We learned about Mnemonic Devices to help with memory, and it worked perfectly (for the short term). It took using it multiple times to remember it in the long term.

*I explain above that L1 is needed to learn L2, but I believe that the L1 should be used to clarify, but the L2 should still be the main language for the classroom.