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For my senior project, I am partnering with Liam Cochran and my mentors are Dr. Furman and Ms. Ayers. Liam and I are studying the Japanese language, from the reading and auditory comprehension to speaking fluency. We plan to learn through a lesson planned guidebook called Genki. This guide book is written primarily in Hiragana and Katakana, the two japanese alphabets, which will push is to be very comfortable with reading in Japanese. Our main focus will be vocab, grammar, and speaking to each other. Our final project will be to create a film in Japanese.
Week 1: During the first week of my project, I familiarized myself with reading and writing Katakana and Hiragana, two similar Japanese syllabaries. Understanding both phonetic lettering systems is crucial for creating the Japanese foundation. The Hiragana characters are used for native words, while the Katakana characters are usually reserved for foreign words. So another skill we learned was to recognize when to use each one. I started by using a website named tofugu to learn to read the systems. I would go countless times through each system, making sure to think about clever ways to memorize each one. Once I felt confident in reading, I moved to learning how to write the characters with proper stroke order. I created tables that organized and facilitated learning each character. Whenever I shared off periods with Liam, I would practice with him and compare the way we wrote each character, which helped me a lot. We practiced three days, and on the last day of the week I took a quiz to test if I was confident with all the characters.
Another area of studying is listening comprehension. I started listening to Japanese songs, trying to piece out phrases. I would look at the lyrics as well and try to read them out. My favorite songs right now are トーキョーレギ〜 and 毎日. One is a very relaxed song and the other is a rap song, so they use very different vocabulary.
Week 2: This week I spent learning vocabulary and grammar through the Genki lesson plan book. I learned the everyday sayings such as goodmorning, goodnight, I'm home, let's eat, excuse me, and more. I then learned the words that are related to academics and professions, such as college majors/subjects, words for college, high school, doctor, nurse, lawyer. Furthermore, we learned the daunting task that "counters" are in Japanese. Flat or round objects, minutes or hours, general objects, they all have a different way to be counted, and each one has exceptions for some numbers. I put an image of just some counters used on the right.
Memorizing took a long time, but once I got in the rhythm, I Iearned ways to memorize and familiarize myself with the vocabulary more efficiently. Even though this week we had an arts festival, I stuck to the schedule and met with Liam on Sunday and the rest of the week days. Together, we practiced talking in Japanese by asking each other questions. We not only did that though; we practiced displaying who the subject and object in sentences are. We also realized the most important thing to learning: repetition. We asked what time it was every other minute and said "my name is ...". Liam and I worked on the basics, and made sure they stuck.
After around three days of studying hard, we had our weekly assessment with Dr. Furman and Ms. Ayers. We then showcased our grammar, vocabulary, and conversational skills that we had acquired. We then asked questions on the grammar we learned, and practiced more on speaking. A significant change in our lesson plan is that we also decided to implement Duolingo, for it is an easy way to practice Japanese whenever we can't have long periods of studying.
Week 3:
This week was a heavy on vocabulary and grammar. Liam and I took on Chapter two and three of Genki. It began with learning how to point at things: this one, that one, that one over there, this watch, that book, here, there, over there, who, what, where. After that, we learned asking how much something is worth and how to buy it. We learned more vocabulary over food, daily things (wallet, umbrella), places (bank, library), countries, college majors, family, money matters (expensive, "how much"), and daily expressions. This was followed by learning how to negate a statement in a formal and colloquial manner. We also learned how to ask for directions, give directions, and point at things (that is a pencil*imaginary pointing).
The next part was learning more on the counting system. Words like 100 or 1000, how to say 21,000. Slowly but surely, I transitioned from taking multiple seconds to almost instant in translating large numbers into Japanese.
Chapter Three got into the nitty gritty: we started learning conjugations. Surprisingly, it wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be. I learned the present tense conjugation for -ru, -u, and for three irregular verbs. For vocabulary, we learned entertainment (such as movies and music); food; places (home, cafe, school); time (tomorrow, everyday, Saturday); and multiple verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. After that, we continued learning more about "particles" that indicate the relation that a noun bears to the verb. We worked with wo, de, ni, and he.
Once grammar was finished, we learned how to extend an invitation towards someone by changing the verb. We also learned the general word order in a sentence. I then spent several hours working on my Kanji, and the characters that correspond to a word. I tried to memorize 100 Kanji characters on a site called KanjiQuizzer. On the left is an example of Kanji.
Week 4:
This week we again took in a lot more vocab. In chapter 4, there was a focus on locations that are used everyday such as a park, supermarket, hospital, bookstore, restaurant. We also learned everyday items such as a chair, desk, flower, as well as days of the week. We then learned more verbs for writing, waiting, and meeting someone.
Once the vocab was memorized, we learned location words and how to describe objects with them. "The girl to the right of that tree", "the guy in between those two girls", "the food on top of that table."
Now for the gritty grammar. When you want to say "there is X", you need a different verb for living things ands objects. We also learned the past tense. The conjugation for the affirmative and negative was surprisingly simple.
Particles are an extremely important part in Japanese grammar. We learned "mo", which means also, and can be used for describing when an activity is performed by two or more people. We also learned the function for the particle to.
After that, Liam and I spent time learning how to describe the duration of an activity, as well as how to express the quantity of a noun.
That was all the vocab and grammar for Chapter 4, so we just spent a lot of time practicing it by conversing with each other in Japanese. We then memorized the Vocabulary for chapter 5, and will learn the grammar next.
Finally, I spent a couple hours reviewing my Kanji again, where I'm getting more and more comfortable.
Advice to future seniors:
There's really no right or wrong way in how to live your senior year. Figuring out whether to prioritize friends or grades can be a struggle considering it is a very stressful time, but as long as you don't go to either extreme there's no wrong way. I would try to find a balance, and try to replace all the time of procrastination with work or socializing since senior year will go by extremely fast. I would definitely study and try my hardest, but not stress too much over the results since you know you did your best,
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