Italian girl..BA Japanese?

Hi guys!
As you can see from the title I'm Italian and I'm thinking about applying to SOAS for 2015..The problem is: at first SOAS looked like the uni of my dreams, but as I started reading reviews I began getting really confused. Someone describes it as wonderful (high-quality teaching, friendly people, eye-opening etc), while others write horrible things about it and especially about learning Japan (which is the language I'd like to study most :frown:

). Is there any learning Japanese student/international student that could help me? Applying to SOAS wouldn't be easy for me, I'd have to leave my country and save money to do it, so I must be sure that it's worth.
Thank you and sorry for the long post :tongue:

Reply 1

zombie.NATION

I'm an international student doing BA Korean and Japanese. I only started last month, but I've spoken with students who started Japanese before this year and they've all had good things to say about it. SOAS is pretty much as I expected, based on the comments I'd read here, and it's definitely my kind of place.

School of Oriental and African Studies

London

Reply 2

ChiaraTi

Thank you for your reply :smile:

You said SOAS is definitely your kind of place: would you mind giving me some details?..what is it like? what do you think about lectures etc?..Anything you want!

Reply 3

zombie.NATION

Original post by ChiaraTi

Thank you for your reply :smile:

You said SOAS is definitely your kind of place: would you mind giving me some details?..what is it like? what do you think about lectures etc?..Anything you want!

"Quirky" is probably the best way to describe it. There's always some kind of culture-related talk, society event, awareness campaign, etc., going on. The buildings are small and spread out, so it has a somewhat unique atmosphere for a university, and there are so many different people from so many different countries/backgrounds. There are quite a few "interesting" people. :tongue:

It's true that admin. can be very slow with things, and things don't always go according to schedule, but I, personally, haven't had any major problems.

The Japanese culture/history class is interesting, though there's a lot to cover in a relatively short amount of time, so it can sometimes feel like you're jumping around through Japanese history and only getting random snippets of what happened during various periods (that's how I feel, at least). There's a lot of reading to keep up with for the class and future exams, but it's not too bad (at least in my opinion), and you get access to previous exam questions so you get an idea of what you'll need to be sure to remember. There's something called a "tutorial" for the course that's pretty strange to me. During the hour-long tutorial, you have to discuss whatever was taught during the last lecture, as well as the material you were required to read for the upcoming lecture, and the material you were required to read for the tutorial itself.

There are about 10 hours of Japanese class per week, with classes for grammar, speaking practice, reading practice, translation, and learning kanji. There's a vocab quiz and a general quiz every week. I think the course is fun, the pace is good, and I like the teachers. Hope that helps!