Learning a Foreign Language

It has now been 5 weeks since I started this project. This week I did the fourth group of ten Hiragana characters. I am almost done with Hiragana! Next week I will be finished learning Hiragana, but I will need to continue practicing writing them. The book has many exercises that have you writing words and sentences with the characters. I am not having a hard time remembering the characters because they are pretty simple. Some are similar, though, so I sometimes write the wrong one down. In the conversation book, I did chapters 5, 6, and 7. These chapters were pretty long. Chapter 5 went over conjugation, chapter 6 went over more grammar essentials, and chapter 7 went over numbers. The grammar is kind of challenging because it is different than English. I learned that when we put -ing on the end of a word, Japanese puts -te on the end of a word. For example, watching is translated as mi Japanese and to make it "watching", you add te , so it would be mi-ti. To say "...

This week flew by! I had such a busy week I wasn't able to get as much done as I did for week 3. I found a couple times this week to work on writing, learning phrases, and work in the conversation book. On busy weeks like this, it is harder fitting learning Japanese into my schedule. It takes time depending on how much I want to accomplish. It takes around 30 minutes to an hour for me each day. I wasn't able to study everyday this week though. In my writing books, I learned another 10 Hiragana. In one book it makes me write the character around 8 times in the space provided. In the other book, it has me write the character around 10 times. So I first write each character I'm on 18 times and then move on to the next. At the end of the ten or so characters there is a review where I write Japanese words with the character that I learned. I have also been reviewing the 10 characters that I learned in week 3. I am now on chapter 5 in the book that is teaching me how to sp...

This is a proposal I wrote for Composition II class. It was due today and I am supposed to add it to my blog, so enjoy. A Proposal for MACC Kirksville Campus to Add a Foreign Language Class Problem             The problem with the classes MACC Kirksville Higher Education Center offers, is that it does not include foreign language classes. When I was planning my fall 2017 course schedule with my advisor, I was expecting to choose a foreign language class. Much to my surprise, I found out the Kirksville campus does not offer any foreign language classes. I was so surprised I thought about changing colleges. I think foreign language classes are important. In high school, my favorite classes were Spanish class, Geography, and World History. I love learning about other cultures and foreign languages. When I took Spanish, I saw that the class really brought students together and because of the fun class trips ...

This past week was spring break for me, so I had plenty of time to work on Japanese. I have also been watching videos on Youtube about Japan. My goal this week was to find out more about transportation in Japan and continue learning Japanese. Both of these goals were accomplished and I haven't really ran into any obstacles. Japanese is different than English, Spanish, and French in many ways, but that is probably why I like learning it so much. In high school, I took French sophomore year because that was the only language the school I went to offered. Then, I changed schools and took Spanish my junior and senior years because that was the only foreign language they offered. Now since I left, that school offers German and Spanish. I really liked those classes, but now I am learning Japanese on my own and I can go at my own pace. In the book that is teaching me how to speak Japanese, I have finished two chapters. The book started out by telling me how to use the book, ten reaso...

I have started learning Japanese in my books. One of the books I am using is called The Complete Idiot's Guide to Conversational Japanese and I bought it at a bookstore. I have also began to practice writing in another book I got. Last week, the first week, I got my supplies and made a plan of how much I would like to accomplish. I bought two books for learning how to write on Amazon and then I found a Japanese translation dictionary from a second time around store . I also downloaded an app to help me practice numbers and phrases. I am enjoying this project so far. I am glad I chose to learn Japanese for my project. In high school, Spanish class and history class were my favorites. Since I took foreign language in high school, this experience is going to be quite different because I am learning a language on my own. So far, learning the greetings and phrases isn't very hard. I have the pronunciation down but I see how different Japanese sentence structure is from English...

Last Tuesday, March 20th, I shared my project idea with my Composition II class. Each of us were assigned to present our project idea to the class. The assignment was called "Pitch to the Sharks" and I had 3 minutes to share what I am doing for the Genius Hour project. To prepare for this assignment I typed out what I wanted to tell the class. I will post here what I typed up. Learning a Foreign Language: Pitching to the Sharks             Hi everyone. I chose to learn a foreign language for my Genius Hour project. This idea started in January right after New Year’s. Around this time, I made a New Year’s resolution to travel to a foreign country in 2018. I have always wanted to travel somewhere outside of the U.S. and I have a list of places I would love to go. Japan being on the top of that list. Since February, I have been planning on where I want to go in Japan and I have been figuring out how much it will all cos...