Oi! Genki ka!? Article 8: Foreign Language Acquisition (July 2007)

Foreign Language Acquisition

There was a lot of intense studying involved.

Very often in conversations, people will say to me, "Japanese is really difficult, isn't it? After all, there's hiragana, katakana, and kanji." (Note: this refers to the three types of characters used in written Japanese.) In truth, for someone like me who comes from a country that only uses characters based on the Latin alphabet, it wasn't easy to study Japanese. However, when it all comes down to it, Japanese is just another language. And like any other language, it has its easy parts and its hard parts. If you have the desire to learn and just put forth a reasonable effort to study, you can learn how to use it.

Since I started studying, I am now in my eleventh year of studying Japanese. Many people often ask me how I was able to pick up the Japanese language. From the first day of classes, I felt like it was something worthwhile for me to study, so whenever I had a free moment, I would use it to study or review Japanese. After we started learning the different characters used in Japanese writing, I would spend my breakfasts after class writing. I would eat cereal with one hand and write with the other. I had a really rough time figuring out the difference between characters like "nu", "me", "wa", "ne, "shi" and "tsu"...

...but with a lot of repetition in writing, I gradually figured out which character was which.

One thing our sensei told us really helped me with learning kanji, the Chinese characters used in Japan: "Learn the radicals." (Note: radicals are certain parts of each kanji At first, kanji only looked like pictures, but with our sensei's help, I was able to look at each character in parts, which made them so much easier to learn and remember.

When it came to learning the different characters used in Japanese, time and repetition helped me finally be able to write.

The real problem was speaking. My pronunciation had a strong American accent. Plus, all of the "ra" sounds (ra, ri, ru, re, ro, rya, ryu, ryo) and "fu", sounds which we don't have in English, really caused me a lot of trouble. I wanted to speak but I couldn't speak. I thought for a long time about what I could do to overcome this, and I finally came up with an answer.

Just get out there and use it.

It's natural to feel like "I don't understand", "I can't speak it", "I can't use it" when you start out in a foreign language. There is no way you can suddenly speak fluently in a language you've never even studied before. It's natural to feel that way, but you can't let yourself lose out to that kind of negative way of thinking. If you do, you'll never be able to use it, or speak it, or understand it.

I went to a university that had a lot of Japanese exchange students, so I was in a great environment to learn the language. I had a lot of opportunities outside of class to use what I'd learned. I made an effort to speak Japanese with exchange students I'd become friends with. Of course, at first my Japanese sucked and I was hardly able to say anything at all, but with my in-class studies at outside-of-class practice, I got to the point where I was able to communicate in Japanese.

There's one more question I often get asked: "What can I do to improve my English?" My answer is always the same:

Just get out there and use it.

If you have a chance to use it, then do so. If you don't have any chances, make some. You may not be good at first, but with time, you'll get better. I can say that from experience.

Oi! Genki ka!? Article 7: IPA (June 2007)

IPA

At Japan Night with some of the 2000 Spring AUAP Group at CWU, probably in June.

The university I attended, Central Washington University, has a sister school relationship with Asia University in Tokyo, and every year many exchange students come from Asia University via an exchange program know as the Asia University America Program (AUAP). At five months, it is a fairly short stay, but the students that come to CWU study English and their respective majors while staying in the on-campus dormitories, sharing rooms with American roommates. I became friends with quite a few AUAP students, and while talking with them, I learned about what seemed to be an interesting part-time job: being an IPA.

What is an IPA? IPA is short for International Peer Advisor, and an IPA is a student attending CWU who helps the AUAP participants get accustomed to American university life and living in the U.S. The exchange students who come to CWU on AUAP don't know much about the university or the town that it's in (Ellensburg), so it is the IPA's responsibility to help them get acclimated to their new lifestyle as quickly as possible.

At the time, I was studying Japanese and had made many close friends through AUAP, and more than anything else, I wanted to know more about Japan. I figured being an IPA would be a good way to do that, so I went to the AUAP Office and applied for a job. After going through a short interview process, I got the job! Over the next year and a half, I worked as an IPA for three AUAP cycles, and did a lot of activities with the program participants during that time. We had Japanese food parties in the dormitories to promote exchange between the AUAP students and the American dorm residents. We went on camping trips and took part in volunteer activities. We made baseball teams and played in intramural leagues against other teams at the university.

And while there was a lot that was fun, being an IPA had an extremely tough side to it too. I had to work out difficulties between AUAP students and their roommates. At times, I wasn't able to get along well with the groups I was working with. Also, while the legal drinking age in Japan is 20, in the U.S. it is 21, and at times I caught underage students drinking and had to report them to my boss. It was extremely difficult to find a balance between being a friend and being an advisor.

I learned a very important lesson while working as an IPA. During my first cycle, a friend of mine, Rich, who had worked as an IPA previously pointed out, rather sternly, something that I was doing wrong. I thought I was being kind to the AUAP students by speaking in slow, simple English to them. Rich saw this and took me aside, saying, "What you're doing there, that's not being kind or nice or anything at all. You're being a jerk. They aren't stupid, so don't treat them like they are. Speaking slowly, or in simple English, isn't going to help them. Speak normally, like you would to anybody else." It was then that I realized that I'd been speaking in strange English to the AUAP students I was supposed to be helping. If our positions had been switched, I'd have hated that, and I really regretted my actions up to that point. I'd been acting like I was better than them; like I was above them somehow. And that was messed up.

Having that pointed out to me taught me a very important lesson. Even if someone isn't able to communicate well, they still need to be treated with the same respect afforded to all people. That's something I hope to keep in mind in my interactions with people from now on.

Updates!

So...

It's been a month and a half since I've done anything worthwhile on this here blog.

I can make all sorts of excuses (friends came from Hokkaido for a week, busy with work, practicing to play the flute in a drum parade tomorrow, started teaching a class at the local junior college, went to Tokyo for a friend's wedding, different friend came from Tokyo, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), but what would be the point?

Hopefully I can get another chapter from my book up sometime today before I have to go to practice.

I do have some fairly big news that I should be able to share in the next couple of weeks. A few things need to get finalized before I can make an official announcemt though.

But if things go through like they should, this will be a pretty big freaking deal.

Stay tuned!