Has any of you guys taken Japanese Classes in University or High School

Japanese Language Questions
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Hello Wanikani folks

Coming into mind, Has any other wanikani users here ever taken a high school or college level Japanese class before. I will be sharing my experience here.

I took 3 years of Japanese classes under my sensei and I graduated my high school’s Japanese program very early by a year. Next year I will be mentoring 1st and 2nd year students at my school. I have done a lot of self study Japanese as well which was why by the time I was a junior taking the 4th year, I held JLPT N2 despite the content being Genki II.

My sensei has taught Japanese for 20+ years, she’s very passionate about her job and she’s from the Tokyo area. I decided in 8th grade that I wanted to pursue Japanese language in high school.

Freshman year: I had really high expectations for myself, I was kind of the midst of the crowd in 1st year Japanese at the start. I self studied a lot using duolingo at that time, It was a great start but I don’t use it anymore.

Sophmore year: Was the most interesting, I took the 2nd year level because the 3rd year level was full, I wanted to SKIP but I COULD NOT. So I spent the 1st semester absolutely dominating the class. No other student was at my level by then. Japanese exchange students came to our school one time to do an activity and I ended up having to lecture and help the students because I read super fast, (the exchange student was laughing very hard)., There was space 2nd semester so I was able to be promoted to the 3rd year and be with most other students.

Junior Year: My most successful year of Japanese studies likely ever. There were only 11 or so people in my Japanese class but I was still dominating as I studied a lot of Japanese over the summer. I registered for JLPT N2 and took Kanji Kentei 4. I passed both examinations. Plus I took the world language test in my school. I was reading a lot of authentic Japanese material like Wikipedia and regular news articles, and after my N2 pass I have gotten a lot better at it now.

Senior year: I will be a teacher assistant. I have been making sure I am disciplined and ready for this role.

End of story, that’s my story. However there were some behaviors that I’ve really noticed from myself.

  1. If you are JLPT N2 or so or over, or have good profiency, no need to take it,

  2. My Japanese was very hard for other students to understand, that’s not because its not perfect but because I was using a lot more difficult stuff.

  3. I was trying to explain a lot more in depth about a topic including its nuances, in presentations or essays using stuff we haven’t learnt. I have never really understood how one can make an essay using stuff that has been “learnt in class”, my teacher pointed me out as I wanted to experiment my knowledge.

  4. My 4th year class used genki 2, I think the class is good if you want to reinforce some of those fundamental grammar again but you will end up being very complicated for others if you’re advanced.

  5. If you’re advanced, you might be used very often by other students. I always wanted to push to work alone rather than in groups, If I wanted to be in a group it would be with someone who also is good but it was never the case so I always pushed to be ALONE.

  1. We did a lot of partner work or so in class, if you’re N2 or so you may be thinking a lot more deep on certain prompts, and if you try to go advanced you’re teacher will definitely stop you. (was the case). Genki prompts are very vague
  2. It was a very slow class as you may expect. It was even pretty loud too. I knew a lot of others were anime weebs. I don’t necessarily like anime myself. I’m using it for practical use or business. A lot of people were weeded out and left after 2nd year.

Also, I have joined Japan Bowl last year and the year before. They were offering lifetime wanikani subscriptions towards people who scored 6th to 4th. I was one of the teams who got it. The Japan Bowl was a team competition and there were 15 teams. My teammate didn’t do pretty much any questions and relied on me. I knew I took down a lot of teams with my own knowledge.

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Although my university offers Japanese courses, I never found the the interest or need to take them as I probably know most of the stuff if not all they are gonna teach anyway. That coupled with the fact that I know from my experience with my second language just how ineffective academic language classes can be. I always prioritized self-learning and immersion.

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As someone who has been self studying for years, my experience has been different! I started learning Japanese in 2020 and have been at a level where I can comfortably play a lot of video games and read manga in Japanese for quite some time. So understanding-wise, it wasn’t too bad, I would say. But, as is the curse for many self-learners, that didn’t mean I actually got communication skills in Japanese :upside_down_face: Which are not tested at all in the JLPT!

Now I’m currently at the University of Tokyo and for the first time ever attend an actual Japanese class. Before you sign up for Japanese language classes, you have to take a placement test and I was placed in the intermediate level. That turned out to be great as this is where they offer more specialized courses; the beginner courses are just general beginner 1, beginner 2, etc. while starting with intermediate, you can decide to visit a reading class, or academic writing class, or conversation class,.. The latter is what I’ve chosen

Sure, you can get conversation practice in other ways as well, but I’ve found it quite nice to build up some confidence in speaking Japanese

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I did Japanese at uni. Got a diploma out of it (so now I can put “DipLang” after my name, if I feel like it).

Well, that’s utterly insane. Genki 2 is a second-year textbook, hence the 2.

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Took 3 years of Japanese in college, which covered Genki I and II, plus about 3/4 of Tobira. I grew up speaking Japanese so already knew the grammar from the first year and most of the second year, but I found it to be a good exercise to formalize it through classes. My school’s Japanese program was really great- I love the variety of teachers (who were all native speakers), and we had class every day which was so helpful in reinforcing knowledge and keeping a relatively fast pace. All classes also had a TA who was a foreign exchange student from Japan, and even from the very beginning we were only allowed to speak in Japanese during class. So granted I’m biased by being very lucky with my Japanese program.

I think learning to express yourself using only the specific grammar lessons from that chapter can be a useful exercise. Even when speaking with other students in class, part of language knowledge is being able to speak at a different level so different people can understand you.

That being said, it’s definitely a different skill set than just getting to learn a language normally, and I can understand your frustration wanting to experiment more with new vocab/grammar you were learning through self study. Hopefully after high school you’ll have more chances to learn with folks who are closer to your level.

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MIT…Sort of?:
My middle and high school didn’t have it, but I did self-teach myself via the MIT Japanese course website. This was over 20 years ago so even though it wasn’t an Open Course, it also wasn’t restricted. It was their assignment website and there happened to be lessons there because they weren’t using a textbook. However sometimes they would refer to materials that weren’t on the website that the teacher would be giving out to actual MIT students, since it wasn’t meant to be for online self-learners.

Still, in their Japanese 1 online materials I learned the kanas (and their curriculum schedule page showed that it was expected to learn both in two weeks so that’s what I did), and about 100 kanji. It was a fantastic first foray into Japanese and I only wish I could have been an actual real MIT student (and not a middle/high schooler).

Years later I found the page again and their Japanese 1/2 stuff was replaced with a schedule to pages for Genki.

Actual College Experience:

Anyway, when I did get to be college-aged, one of the colleges I attended did have Japanese 1 and 2. I figured, with my previous knowledge, I would be ok to sign up straight for the second course even though I hadn’t studied in over a year. I got a counselor to let me skip the prerequisite since I had taken the Japanese SAT 2 in my junior year of high school and gotten a somewhat acceptable score. Not a great score but good enough.

In my mind, I figured the class would be a slightly easier version to the MIT’s Japanese 2 class, with me having to potentially learn different kanji that the class covered.

First day of class, the professor realized I wasn’t in her first class before and asked whether I took some elsewhere and I told her I was self-taught. She said the class might be too hard but allowed me to attend anyway.

We had to write an assignment during the class, as part of review, and she did peek through them right as class was ending. She asked me and one other girl to stay a few minutes after if we could. I kid you not she said something like “Are you sure you two want to be in this class? I noticed you used kanji and we don’t cover that in this class at all. You’ll be bored”.

Yes you read that correctly. The Japanese 102 class did not have kanji. 101 was for Hiragana and 102 for Katakana. Two semesters to learn the Kanas. No wonder they made us get "Japanese for Busy People - Romaji edition, which had every Japanese stentence in Kana + romaji, no kanji.

Well I should have taken her advice. I was indeed bored. I figured it’d be good grammar review, and yes it was, but it was honestly demotivating. I didn’t find the listening or talking practice to be that valuable because everyone else also spoke horribly and I felt like I was learning bad habits. Reading-wise, the assignments where we read each other’s work were boring because it was kana.

Because of this, when we had assignments in groups of two, rather than to share with the whole class, the professor always paired me and the one other student who knew kanji (because she was Chinese) together. That was at least fun. I had to learn some extra kanji that she knew but I didn’t. My kanji-using buddy was the best part of the class, with the only other highlight being when we watched Ponyo at a school screening for an extra credit activity.

But even beyond that, what felt demotivating was just how uninterested almost everyone seemed in actually learning Japanese. Half the class were people trying to meet some kind of language requirement but didn’t actually want to learn Japanese to any kind of fluency, and the other half were anime/manga fans who never practiced outside of their homework (and that’s not a headcanon, that’s from me talking to them trying to find things in common). They really wanted to only learn the classroom material and no further.

Including myself, there were maybe only 3 people who actually did any kind of additional studying beyond the classwork and thus discuss what books, games, or whatever we were using as resources.

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Are you Japanese heritage speaker too? Same as me.

I’ve mostly been talking with my teacher in Japanese myself, and I have been talking to my mom and listening to her way more often in Japanese passively, you can really feel the tone from them which is really really good.

I’m going to be a TA next year for my teacher, so I’m looking forward to it.

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Yes you read that correctly. The Japanese 102 class did not have kanji. 101 was for Hiragana and 102 for Katakana. Two semesters to learn the Kanas. No wonder they made us get "Japanese for Busy People - Romaji edition, which had every Japanese stentence in Kana + romaji, no kanji.

HAHAHAHA, Yes, we learnt Kanji in my class but not effectively, we were learning kanji that my teacher required us to write on the test. I was using the learnt kanji or so in various ways as well as several more difficult kanji that no one has really really learnt. I am studying for ２級 so there are a lot of very complex characters.

102 and 101 class had no kanji? Man that is crazy. I’m afraid that in 1st year myself the whole first semester will be hiragana katakana, konnichiwa and o Genki desuka.

But even beyond that, what felt demotivating was just how uninterested almost everyone seemed in actually learning Japanese.

I really agree with that statement, I told earlier that the 100 classes have like 70-80 signing up but only 30 or so remain in the 3rd year, and then only 10 or so in the fourth year. I don’t like anime weebs very much, yes some people take Japanese very seriously and are anime weebs but there’s often a switch in behavior at times.

Including myself, there were maybe only 3 people who actually did any kind of additional studying beyond the classwork and thus discuss what books, games, or whatever we were using as resources.

Were you study buddies with them, you should have definitely networked with them.

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Our 1st and 2nd year classes use “Adventures in Japanese” by Cheng and Tsui.

3rd and 4th use Genki I and II.

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… I learnt all the kana in two weeks.

Yeah, no, that’s nuts. Genki I is a first-year textbook. I’ve never heard of Adventures in Japanese, but based on previews I googled up, it also looks like a perfectly servicable first-year textbook, so why you’d study that for two years and then start over from scratch again utterly perplexes me.

My experience was pretty similar to @leahmaybe above except we used Nakama 1 and 2 in the first two years, and then about 3/4 of Tobira in the third.

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I was buddies with one, the other was too busy, our schedules didn’t match well. But then once the semester ended, we parted ways because it was a 2-year college (hence why it only had 101 and 102) and we transferred to very different 4-year schools

If it makes you feel better, it’s not the first time I’ve mentioned my experience and from what I gather about other people who studied in university, this is not common. My school was just uniquely bad (for this subject. It was awesome for other subjects, just not Japanese)

Me too. Back in middle school when I was mooching off the MIT website.

I figured my local school wouldn’t be as arduous as MIT but I was not mentally prepared for it to be THAT much worse.

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that was my experience. jpn101 was like, everything we covered in high school japanese in like the first three weeks.

i didn’t have enough extra credits spare in my degree to go beyond jpn101 but my professor was extremely nice and wrote me a recommendation for the JET program, so that was quite good.

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Japanese language was a mandatory subject in my high school so I did it for 3 years and got excellent marks. It was very, very basic though, like at most N5 level knowledge.

Then I also had the opportunity to study in Japan for my master’s degree - the degree was in English, but the school offered free Japanese classes. I took the free classes without additional course credits, but honestly I skipped a lot of class because I had to prioritize my other coursework and sometimes sleep lol. I struggled to keep up with my classmates at kanji because a lot of them are from China so they breeze through kanji. On the other hand, I was a lot better at speaking. In the end, although I picked up some things here and there, I learned more by immersion. Looking back now, I wish I was more diligent at studying while I had the chance, but at the same time I think I did my best at the time.

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Yes, very basic stuff

I cared about my own learning a lot though and wanted personal growth and looks like my teacher really supported me in doing it

I’m a world language mentor though next year, I’m going to be taking N1 while the class is N5 below or so. I want to ensure I’m still very qualified because there will be some challenging students.

We had Japan Bowl competitions here too.

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Its honestly my school idk

Yes adventures in Japanese is an OK textbook, my teacher (for 2nd year students) would be bouncing all around the place, we would be spending a month studying for this high school competition called the Japan Bowl and like no one was prepared and it was ineffective.

We get college credit in the 3rd and 4th year, I don’t get how other students are as aware of the JLPT. I HAD to take the class to get credit too even though I was N2 passer by 4th year.

We don’t even do the Genki reading exercises,

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At least you guys had the option. In the Netherlands it wasn’t when I went through High School ~20 years ago, and it still doesn’t seem to be (there are no Japanese exams on the official roster)
There’s very robust language education in the sense that you have to learn multiple languages, but the selection is very narrow.

Still, I wouldn’t have picked up Japanese when I could. I’m fairly good at languages, but I never enjoyed learning them in school. I definitely wouldn’t want a 5-6th language :smiley:

Language options in the Netherlands:

  • Dutch (compulsory)
  • English (compulsory)
  • German (compulsory depending on level)
  • French (compulsory depending on level)
  • Greek / Latin (compulsory only for the ‘highest’ level)

Voluntary languages (not every school offers these. Mine offered none of these.)

  • Frisian (local language)
  • Spanish
  • Russian
  • Arabic
  • Tukish
  • Italian (no central exam)
  • Chinese (no central exam)

Only 6 ‘real’ foreign language options. Definitely no Japanese.

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I’m pleased that you’re doing well in school and that you feel confident and capable! But, I want to offer you a quick word of caution. I teach really advanced students, and I have seen many students come into my classes with the idea that they are very far ahead of all of their peers, but it can be risky to build your sense of self on that. Eventually, if you do things right, you will end up in a place where people are equal or even beyond you in ability, and I’ve seen my students’ entire sense of self destroyed by this, to the point where they can no longer participate in the class or environment. From my perspective it’s very sad, because my students have great potential, they just need to be able to pursue things with a focus on their own growth, rather than one-upsmanship. I’m not saying this is or will be you, but it might be worth it to you to focus less on your classmates.

Anyway, that’s my two cents as an Old™️.

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