てがみ

サンクスギビング休み

サンクスギビング休みは たのしかったです。うちにかえいてべんきょうしてかいものしてうちにたくだんねました。サンクスギビング曜日に りょう人とおいしいひるごはんをたべてデパートにかいものにいきました。金曜日にテレビをみました。ギルモー・ガールズ をみました。とてもおもしろかったです。くじからいちじくじからいちじまでテレビを見ました。土曜日にかいものしました。日曜日にプリンストンへいきました。私のへやでべんきょうしました。

Revised PE Goals

After half a semester (wow that was fast!) I regret to share that I don't think I've been very successful with achieving my original PE goals. I think my biggest weakness is in pitch and intonation. I seem to struggle a lot with using the right pitch for words, as opposed to longer phrases. In order to improve on this, the best thing for me to do would probably be to go to office hours to work on my pronunciation. This wasn't originally one of my stated plans, but I think I should definitely add it. I also haven't been watching anime very much. I can't seem to rekindle my interest in it. If anyone has any suggestions for anime to watch, please share them with me!

じゃまた

にほんごのビディオー

PE Goals

こんぼんは！

My pronunciation goals:

1. 'Like a native speaker': My main goal for the year is to speak Japanese as naturally as possible. As a native Spanish speaker, some of the sounds between the two are somewhat similar, and I'd like to use this to my advantage. 

2. Getting the long vowels/double consonants down: I feel as though this will be the most difficult thing for me to pronounce properly. In class, it's easy to pick up on the differences between long vowels vs. single vowels and double consonants vs. single consonants, but I think that outside of class this will be difficult to do. We may overemphasize these in class when practicing, so I hope to make the transition from overemphasizing/over-stressing to sounding more natural outside of class. 

3. Mastering the 'r' sound: I find it difficult to pronounce this sound since it's kind of a mixture of the English 'r' and 'l' sounds. Of all the consonants, it's the one I have the least confidence in pronouncing, so I'd like change that! 

How do I plan on achieving these goals?

1. Go to Japanese language table at least once a month! I should probably have a goal of going more often, but I know that I'm always incredibly reluctant to going to language tables, so even going once a month will be a big step for me. 

2. Practice speaking with friends who are native Japanese speakers or who may have studied the language for a long time. It will definitely be easier for me to approach friends for conversational practice, so I should take advantage of them as an additional resource!

3. Watch an episode of anime at least twice a week. I noticed on someone's past blog that their goal was to shadow the characters while watching, and I think that's a great idea. Shadowing and trying to sound like the character will definitely help in speaking more naturally. 

4. Read manga! At this point, I know I won't understand most of what is written, but even familiarizing myself with the characters and starting to recognize some things will be nice. I think it will be especially nice to see the progress that I make throughout the year. 

こんにちは！

こんにちは、わたしは Sheilaです。あめりかじんです。Princetonだいがくのよねんせいです。わたしがせんくうのあじあけんきゅうです。New Jersey の Newark からきました。にほんごのがくせいです。じゃまた！

Hello, readers? I hope not to be too awkward in this self introductory post. This year, my senior year(!), I decided to take Japanese 101 primarily for fun! I'm an East Asian Studies major, focusing on Korea, so I've studied Korean for the past 3 years, and I wanted to challenge myself by trying to learn another East Asian language. And I opted to take Japanese over Chinese because I do occasionally watch anime and read manga, and I absolutely love Japan, so I'd like to be able to visit in the future and be able to communicate with the locals in their native language. 
I'm primarily excited to learn hiragana and katakana and to start picking up on Japanese phrases. Even though I've studied Korean for so long, I still find that I have a difficult time with listening and fully understanding what other people say, so I hope to really focus in on this skill now that I'm beginning Japanese. 
After a few days of class, my biggest concern is probably becoming comfortable in class to speak up and communicate with other students. I'm more on the reserved side, so I think this will present somewhat of a challenge to me. Another concern I have is creating a schedule to dedicate an appropriate amount of time to studying the language outside of class. With a thesis and post grad plans to worry about, I really hope I develop good language studying habits early on!
I think the appropriate word of encouragement to say in Japanese is gambatte, so がんばって！