LC Japanese course

Azuraiii

Hi guys.

Im searching information for leaving cert japanese course.

I need to find out...
-Cost
-When i go.
-Reccomended college..(preffer somewhere in town in Dublin)
-Age requirements.
-Books and stationery needed.
-Time start/finish.
-Other types of information and requirements i should know

Many Thanks~:)

airurando

Cost: free, at least my classes were. The Department funds them. Some schools may charge for them, of course, but they really shouldn't.

When: I have no idea. Where do you live? I'm from Galway, and we had classes on Saturday mornings in town, but our teacher went do different places in the county during the week.

Recommended college: Ditto. No clue.

Age requirements: You MUST be an LC student to get the free classes. A friend of mine in 1st year of college dropped into one of the classes and was told to get out.

Books: We used "Nihongo Kantan", which was written by the former Chief Examiner for LC Japanese. I wouldn't recommend using it exclusively though, especially if you decide to self-study, because it doesn't really cover essay-writing or some of the components of the oral. Great for vocab and grammar though, and there's a fair few listening sections as well.

Time: Again, completely dependent on when you go. Our classes were two hours, but our teacher let our class cut into the 5th years' time (their classes were after ours) during 6th year as the orals got closer.

Misc: You will be expected to write entirely in Japanese symbols, except for the listening exam. So when you start you should put as much effort into learning the hiragana (the basic characters, ESSENTIAL to get anywhere) as possible. Like, write random words in symbols, drill the full set in the back of copybooks if you get bored in class, etc. You can only really start studying properly once you are comfortable with the reading and writing.

To counterbalance this, Japanese pronunciation and spelling are simple (everything is spelt exactly how it sounds, and Japanese has very few sounds compared to, say, English), and grammar at LC level is quite flexible regarding word order. Once the verb comes at the end of the sentence and the individual components are right, you can't go too far wrong.

It's not as hard as LC French, Spanish, etc (it's probably a bit above JC Hons. standard), but considering that it's a brand new language and you will probably be learning it in under two years it can be quite a tricky task. In other words, don't learn it just because you fancy yourself as an otaku (not saying that you are). It's hard work! But I just did my LC and am not two-thirds of my way through a 6-week homestay in Nagano, and can have conversation with native speakers, provided I take it handy and don't freak out. So if you put in the work it WILL pay off.

Any other questions?

Mr Cawley

Possible to self study in a year and get an A1?

H2student

@Mr. Cawley, That is a real difficult question to answer. Especially since I didn't take the subject myself (better off just skipping my post actually) It depends on how much you are exposed to the language, interest, aptitude etc. For example, I would think that learning japanese would be slightly easier for me than someone who have never really been exposed to the language because I've spent most of my time in the last 3-4 years watching mainly japanese television, gradually absorbing new vocabulary and picking up ways words can be pronounced.

From looking at the exam papers, I would say it's possible. The big problem would be that in the final year of the leaving cert, you have at least 5 others subjects to study for as well. You will likely be so exhausted from the other subjects that you would find it difficult to self-study a whole subject by yourself. This certainly happened to me, someone with almost no willpower. The fact that you have to constantly look up dictionaries and the fact that you won't know whether or not you are pronouncing things correctly isn't going to help either. I envy those who have Japanese teachers.

Mr Cawley

H2student wrote: »

@Mr. Cawley, That is a real difficult question to answer. Especially since I didn't take the subject myself (better off just skipping my post actually) It depends on how much you are exposed to the language, interest, aptitude etc. For example, I would think that learning japanese would be slightly easier for me than someone who have never really been exposed to the language because I've spent most of my time in the last 3-4 years watching mainly japanese television, gradually absorbing new vocabulary and picking up ways words can be pronounced.

From looking at the exam papers, I would say it's possible. The big problem would be that in the final year of the leaving cert, you have at least 5 others subjects to study for as well. You will likely be so exhausted from the other subjects that you would find it difficult to self-study a whole subject by yourself. This certainly happened to me, someone with almost no willpower. The fact that you have to constantly look up dictionaries and the fact that you won't know whether or not you are pronouncing things correctly isn't going to help either. I envy those who have Japanese teachers.

Thanks H2, an A1 starting from scratch, without a teacher is probably a big ask in the final year!