2014 Activity Report

■■■News From the Japanese Language Classroom (February 16th-March 13th)■■■

Japanese language classes at the University of Yangon are held after university lectures have ended from 15:30 to 17:00 in the literature department building. Two Japanese classes are held; classes for second year literature students are held on Mondays and Thursdays while classes for first year students are held on Tuesdays and Fridays. The classes start at the end of January, and I will be in charge of them from February 16th. Joint classes are carried out on Wednesdays with both the first and second year students where Professor Okano holds classes on Japan in Burmese, and teachers also attend the lectures.

Due to the large number of applicants wanting to study Japanese, students have been divided into two classes. At first, the number was close to 30 students in one class, but since there were afterschool extracurricular activities, the number of attendees settled to less than 20. Due to the fact that classes are organized based on students being in the same year, the atmosphere is pleasant, and students who know answers teach those who don’t, and are quick to correct any mistakes made.

Beginning with memorizing Hiragana and Katakana, the study moves smoothly as classes, held once a week for three hours, are taught solely in Japanese.

＜2/16～2/20＞

Despite there being stuttering in the elementary levels, I repeatedly felt that students were able to enjoy communicating amongst each other by using the words they had remembered. For example, when the sentence “What (country) is that (product) from?” was used, I would hope for an answer such as “It is a… from Myanmar”, and we pointed at and asked about things inside the classroom. Answers were plentiful and included “It is a Chinese microphone” and “It is a Thai pen”. It was understood that items from various countries were being used around the room. I also asked if the process before going to university in Myanmar is shorter than in Japan, and was told that students attend when they are 17 years old. The answer was given so naturally.

＜2/23～2/27＞

I received help from 4 University of Yangon exchange students, and they kindly practiced the contents of what they had learned. Students were split into small groups, and although their sentence patterns and vocabularies were limited, using structures such as “desu”, “dewa arimasen”, “nan desuka”, “ikura desu ka” and so on, they were able to speak a lot.

It’s strange, but it seems that when students start studying, the second years are comparatively quicker to remember things than the first years. For example, the first year students end up finding it difficult to recall things such as Hiragana and Katakana.

＜3/2～3/6＞

There were Myanmar nation holidays during the third week on March 2nd and 4th, so the classes have been much more relaxed. March 3rd was the Hinamatsuri or “Doll’s Day” or “Girl’s Day”, an annual festival held in Japan on March 3rd. Since I had the first year class that day, we made simple dolls made from origami paper together.

A cat entered the second year classroom. Even though we hadn’t started studying yet, one of the students asked in Japanese “What is that?” to which the students replied, in Japanese, “It’s a cat”. I was delighted to see that the students were interested in Japanese and were studying by themselves despite it being an extracurricular class.

＜3/9～3/13＞

At the end of March, the first semester final examination will be held at the University of Yangon. All the students have become very busy with preparation for the exam that there were only 4 students and 4 teachers in the second year class at the beginning of this week (March 9th). I tried looking for the reason as to why there were so few students attending, and one student kindly informed me of the reason: “It’s because of the exam”. I feel like I have heard the students doing their memorization study from around the university this week. Only one student from the first year class attended on the 10th (Tuesday), while only teachers attended on the 11th (Wednesday).

The final examinations will begin next week, but the teachers who are attending the class have been kindly taking with me, so the class will continue for a little longer from the 16th.