It’s surprisingly intensive for 3-hours per day worth of classes. You would wonder why 3 hour-long-session that ends at noon could possibly be hard. The answer is peer pressure - the program is dominated by Ivy League kids, so their inherent competitiveness is so instinctive it is insuppressible even during summer. And to Princeton kids, this program actually matters – it goes to their transcript and GPA and such. And on top of that they have quite sick of the curved grading system – only the top 30% gets As (how ironic, really, only Ivy kids would ever care about grades to begin with..). In such moments am so glad I am at Harvard, it makes the program so much more enjoyable.
There are lots of Kanji (Chinese characters) to memorize, but for me who has studied Chinese up to 3rd year and who likes Chinese characters to begin with, it is not too big of a deal. Also, compared to the Chinese summer language program I took with Harvard 2 years ago, this amount of vocab we learn is sweet and easy.
It is the grammar that is a nightmare. As always, whenever there is conjugation involved (which is the case of most languages I realize) it makes the speaking 10 times harder. Because you have to conjugate all the stupid verbs and adjective at the same time that you speak, by the time you figure out the appropriate form of that word, the Japanese listener (in most cases my host mother) has directed her direction somewhere else (mostly to her kids). That is the reason I absolutely cannot talk in long sentences at home.
Princeton in Ishikawa offers so many activities after class that one doesn't get to do all the studying until quite late. On top of that, the presence of a host mother who likes to chat only contributes to the habit of procrastination, very much intensified during the summer time. So in the end, by the 2nd week the typical college symptoms start to show up – sleep deprivation, yawning during class, excessive coffee drinking. And it doesn't help that there is a test every day, a speech, a midterm or a composition per week.
But I'm glad for the textbooks. We either have the author of the textbook be the head of the program (and also one of the most prominent Japanese language professors), or we get to read Japanese folktales (Momotarou) or watch one of the greatest anime (Japanese animation) of all time - Spirited Away.
I wholeheartedly recommend this program to anyone hoping to learn more Japanese in a truly enjoyable way with a tiny bit of warning - it is really intense.
No comments:
Post a Comment