The 2nd Canada Japanese Video Contest

First Prize

I am Cathy Zhang from Richmond Secondary School, and I completed the video entrance along with Amy Pan and Elina Wang in our senior Japanese class. As a team, we believe that the process of learning a new language does not need to be limited inside a class room. If Japanese is incorporated into daily life, it would become a more concrete way for us to absorb the language. In our short animation, we chose some of our most familiar media including anime, J-pop, drama and magazines, which we are exposed to on a regular basis. Fragments from these media became the basis of our grammar and vocabulary in Japanese, and prepared us for situations where the language is needed. In the second part of our animation, we demonstrated how a suitable environment can accelerate our progress. No text book can be as powerful as an actual tour of the country, and a real conversation with a native. As the video concludes, the key to learning Japanese is the gradual accumulation of experience in the language, and we believe this is the most effective way of all.

The key to learning Japanese is...?, Cathy Zhang, Richmond Secondary School

Second Prize

Hello, my name is Kenny Hartwig, and I am a recent SFU graduate in Computing Science. In my last semester, I made "Friday Exam" with 3 of my fellow Nihongo classmates: Susana Alvarez, Samuel, Dinny, and Henry. We all had such a great time learning together in our JAPN 101 class and wanted to express some of that experience through this video. We'd like to thank Naoko-Sensei for encouraging us to produce this video and helping us experience and learn so much about Japanese language and culture. Studying language has given me great opportunities friends, and experiences I will not forget soon.

Friday Exam, Kenny Hartwig, Simon Fraser University