Japn 402: Japnese Literature
This course aims to develop advanced proficiency through introducing various aspects of modern Japanese literature, including short stories and significant works by authors of the modern period. Taught in Japanese.
Course Reflective Narrative
This Japanese Literature course that I completed in Spring of 2014 fulfills the Language and Communication Major Learning Outcome for my B.A. in Japanese Language and Culture.
This course fulfilled the Language and Communication Major Learning Outcome in many ways. First of all, the course was taught in Japanese and the students also had to communicate to each other and write in Japanese. We read poems and short stories in Japanese as well, so it was a full immersion environment. Finally, we did presentations in Japanese. Through this kind of environment, we not only practiced the Japanese Language, but also communicated for four hours a week verbally and written in Japanese.
Not only did we read famous Japanese authors such as Natsume Souseki, Miazawa Kenji, and Yoshimoto Banana, but we also analyzed and wrote about their works as well. In class we wrote a book report on Yoshimoto Banana's A Little Darkness as you can see below. We also had the opportunity to create works of out own. I have included three of my original poems below that I created in class. I wrote one haiku describing my feelings of wanting to cry because of Japan's insanely hot summer. I have two other free-form poems about my youth and a practice in metaphors. For the final in the class, I read a book of my choosing, The Parrot Butcher Shop by Ishii Shinji, made a presentation and wrote a book report about it.
One of the major things this course provided me was an introduction to the world of Japanese Literature. I now have a few poets and authors that I am familiar with, so I can start reading their works and move on from there. I also had a very pleasant time creating my own poems and using the left side of my brain which usually is relatively dormant most of the time for me.
I want to continue to reading books and short stories in Japanese. In particular, I'm interested in reading more from Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana. I would also like to start writing haiku as a hobby. It's a hobby that I can hone for the rest of my life, but doesn't take too much time out of each day. Overall, I hope to use what I learned in this class to become more linguistically and culturally fluent in Japanese.
seishun_poem.tiff | |
File Size: | 113 kb |
File Type: | tiff |
my_best_haiku.tiff | |
File Size: | 29 kb |
File Type: | tiff |
metaphor_poem.tiff | |
File Size: | 98 kb |
File Type: | tiff |
A little darkness book report | |
File Size: | 64 kb |
File Type: |
book_report_pres.pptx | |
File Size: | 4122 kb |
File Type: | pptx |