The Art of the Japanese Language

Growing up, I was never really interested in Japanese Anime. I never took interest in seeing Japan’s reputation as a country and its achievements. I always saw Japan as a country just like all the others that are in this world. I was in that period of time until an uncle of mine introduced me to anime. At first, I was in denial because I had no interest in watching it whatsoever. Luckily, he introduced me to an anime that surprisingly complies with what I like in real life. Since I was interested in basketball, my uncle showed me his favorite anime, which is about basketball. Since then, he told me that I did not have to force myself to watch it, he just gave a recommendation that I might like since it is about a hobby that I fully enjoy. Thereupon, I said to myself, and I quote,“ This will be the first and last time I watch anything correlated with anime.” Had I known that this anime would have affected my life sooner or later, I would have encountered it differently. Anyhow, after finishing this anime, I thought to myself, “Maybe this was not so bad after all.” Things like this made me realize how I should not judge a book by its cover.

I started judging anime before even exploring it, which shows how I lack knowledge and understanding of it. I was uneducated by how anime can actually affect my life under many circumstances such as learning new vocabulary. When I watch a certain anime, I always remember some of the Japanese vocabulary because of how often the characters mention them. With that being the case, I started remembering more vocabulary to the point that I could make a sentence out of it. As a result of my love for anime, I decided to make this project because it would give me a chance to explain the issues that I am encountering, some of which I am still facing. This project will give me a chance to further explore my communication skills in a form that I have never worked on before. I am really interested to see how this will work out in the future.

Global Context

My personal project focuses on the global context of Personal and cultural expression. This global context helps with shaping my goal because learning Japanese requires cultural expression by being able to express yourself with your communication skills. This global context is about creativity in the forms of expression. It teaches us about how things are subjective and how we are entitled to see things from different points of view. As an example that corresponds to my personal project, learning the art of Manga in Japanese culture helps make your mind comfortable as it encourages you to read from the left to the right. This allows you to be more open to different cultures too. I will be exploring some of the strands that include critical literacy, languages and linguistic systems, and practice and competency. I will continue my research to find out about how global context can be applied to my goal and how it correlates with one another.

Product

The content of the video will focus mainly on examining the problem as well as the objective as they help in making the content of the video more precise. In order to achieve higher marks, the video will be assessed by how clear the goals and objectives were and how they were articulated in the video. Hence, this is why the content of my product is a major success and is expected to have acquired levels 5-6 of the rubric that I have created in Criterion B. In addition to the rubric, the progress of learning the Japanese language will be assessed by the number of characters I have understood as I progress in learning the language. From time to time, the number of Hiragana words will be recorded to see how much I have improved.

Reflection

This personal project has been a roller coaster ride for me. I have encountered many ups and downs, but I still managed to finish the product. This project has taught me to not procrastinate because time is limited and you should not underestimate it. I value this personal project a lot, and honestly, I think this once in a lifetime chance is a really good opportunity for students to express their strengths in the form of a project. I was able to experience what it was like to learn a new language and use it in real lif situations. Not only did I learn a new language, but I was also able to learn a lot of different things and expanded my knowledge, which let me thoroughly explore the global context of my personal project, which is Personal and Cultural Expression. The global context has affected me into doing this personal project seriously and I was able to express my voice in another language. I also learned about the Japanese culture and how things work in that country. I have also improved my confidence as a result of my language learning and how people view me, considering the positive feedback that I received from the people around me.

IB Learner Reflection

Throughout this whole journey, I was able to use my IB skills in this project by doing interviews and research on the internet. I have improved as an IB student as shown in my research skills by filtering out which information is valid to take into account and which are not from a variety of sources on the web. I was able to improve my communication skills and apply it to real life situations. I was also able to get as much information as I could from my tutor by asking her many questions regarding my language learning. Without my communication skills, I would not be able to speak Japanese effectively and I would have hardly gotten any information from my tutor because of miscommunication. My self-management skills play a vital role in this project. Without it, I would not be able to manage wisely, which would result in ruining the timeline of the product. Because of this, I made myself a timetable to keep track of time and not get lost in the process of doing the project. The reason I made this is because balancing school work and this project is a hard thing to do and I have to try my best to find time to do this project while still maintaining my studies for school.

As an IB student we have to think that is why as a thinker, we have to think our way through this project and find the best solution to make the project successful. This is why we brainstorm and organize ideas to make in this project. While working on this project, there were many obvious flaws that I have encountered throughout this process. Without flaws, my project would end up really bad because the mistakes that I made helped me in improving the creation of my product. If I were given a second chance to do this personal project Again, I think I would try to avoid the significant mistakes that I made in the past. I was able to avoid repeated mistakes, but the output could have been better if I had used my self-management skills more wisely. In the future, I hope that I would not make the same mistake in managing my time and I will try to use the IB learner skills to get better results in the long run.

Last but not least, I would like to conclude that this project was a really hard project, but it had a great impact on my life. Considering the flaws that I made, I am grateful that I got to experience this project and I am willing to learn from these mistakes so that I am able to overcome them in the future. With that being said, I had many instances when I was at rock bottom. I felt like procrastinating my work to even giving up at one time. With these obstacles, I knew I had to keep moving forward until I achieve my goal and so I kept pushing myself to not give up and as a result, my product was finished. All in all, these aspects will not only be limited to my language learning transformation, but also to those who want to pursue their dreams to become great learners.