University Degree In Japanese

If anyone has taken a degree in this language, can you tell me how it was? Did you fully develop the ability to speak fluent Japanese? Was the course good? Plus, if you did take the course, what A-Levels did you take that enabled you to start this course. I know many may say they took a language at A Level, but i'm just curious; did anyone take 3/4 ALevel Subjects that had no involvement of an A Level language choice? I don't want to do a language, especially French, since i ain't doing so great at GCSE level. Japanese however, i'm just really intrigued by.

Thanks.

Reply 1

sophia5892

20

Original post by Schu98

If anyone has taken a degree in this language, can you tell me how it was? Did you fully develop the ability to speak fluent Japanese? Was the course good? Plus, if you did take the course, what A-Levels did you take that enabled you to start this course. I know many may say they took a language at A Level, but i'm just curious; did anyone take 3/4 ALevel Subjects that had no involvement of an A Level language choice? I don't want to do a language, especially French, since i ain't doing so great at GCSE level. Japanese however, i'm just really intrigued by.

Thanks.

I'm a bit of a weird example in that I did a three language degree which included Japanese.... so my A Levels were French, German, Italian and Maths (plus General Studies and AS Art).
But a lot of my classmates hadn't done A Level languages. Any humanities subjects are a good foundation for the cultural modules you'll take as part of a language degree (Particularly subjects like history or English Lit). And I've also heard Maths is a good subject to have for Japanese as the logic skills you need to be good at maths can be applied to language learning.
Obviously you'll need to show an aptitude for language learning - some courses specify they want a GCSE in a language at a certain grade, but I'd say generally just showing you have a strong interest in Japanese is enough. Ie. more than, I watch anime and so yay Japanese!

Again I can't comment fully on taking it as a degree as I only got to take Japanese language - my remaining credits were taken up with French and German modules. But i enjoyed the degree, I'm pleased with the level of fluency I attained, and getting to spend a full year studying in Japan was amazing.

As far as fluency goes this in large part depends on your own talents and dedication. I would say I graduated capable of passing JLPT 2, which is what most employers tend to ask foreigners to attain to prove fluency. However I would say my spoken Japanese isn't fluent enough for me to work in Japanese - this is largely down to my own laziness and lack of practice! I spent a lot of my time in Japan with foreigners and I've always been very shy and scared of speaking. However, I am confident that if I was to move there I could easily get by and would very quickly improve now that I have the strong base my degree gave me.

People will likely tell you that you don't graduate fluent, which I personally think is true of any language degree. I can translate and interpret French/German and get by day to day no problem, but I wouldn't say I'm fluent, especially not now I've started doing a masters in translation and I'm seeing a lot more technical/scientific/legal language! I've had language teachers who wouldn't describe themselves as fluent after decades of teaching because the native language will still come more easily to them.

As far as practical fluency goes, you will likely graduate with lower fluency than a student studying European Languages. But on the other hand, levels of English fluency in Asia are much much lower than in Western Europe, so to a certain extent this doesn't really matter. Obviously if you want to be a translator/interpreter it does, but if you're simply wanting to work in Japan or in a business using Japanese then the level of Japanese you attain at the end of your degree will be higher than the level of English attained by most Japanese students (who aren't majoring in English of course!).

Reply 2

AnimeCrazy

Original post by Schu98

If anyone has taken a degree in this language, can you tell me how it was? Did you fully develop the ability to speak fluent Japanese? Was the course good? Plus, if you did take the course, what A-Levels did you take that enabled you to start this course. I know many may say they took a language at A Level, but i'm just curious; did anyone take 3/4 ALevel Subjects that had no involvement of an A Level language choice? I don't want to do a language, especially French, since i ain't doing so great at GCSE level. Japanese however, i'm just really intrigued by.

Thanks.

Are you A2 now then? Ive always wanted to study Japanese in Uni and this Jan i am going to start learning it. I am actually excited, learnt a few phrases on my own xD What Unis are you looking into? I know SOAS are realllllllly good for Language degrees.

Reply 3

AnimeCrazy

Original post by Schu98

Nah, haha, i'm currently a Year 11 student, tho i totally agree with you, Japanese seems like an exciting subject. Yeh, i looked into SOAS, and their university seems awesome. What A Levels do you recommend me doing apart from French; i'm currently hating it at GCSE level :/

Hmmmm, its a clash between what you enjoy and what will be off good use. What would you want to do with the Japanese degree ? Business? Teaching?

Reply 4

Squaresquirrel

13

Original post by Schu98

If anyone has taken a degree in this language, can you tell me how it was? Did you fully develop the ability to speak fluent Japanese? Was the course good? Plus, if you did take the course, what A-Levels did you take that enabled you to start this course. I know many may say they took a language at A Level, but i'm just curious; did anyone take 3/4 ALevel Subjects that had no involvement of an A Level language choice? I don't want to do a language, especially French, since i ain't doing so great at GCSE level. Japanese however, i'm just really intrigued by.

Thanks.

Hi there,

I can't answer all these questions as I'm only a first year but will answer what I can. The course so far is really intense and really hard work BUT you can feel it really pay off, every week I look back and am astounded by how much progress I've made - It's really encouraging. As for fluency on graduation our teachers say they expect us to be minimum JPLT 2 and that we know all the common use kanji. People who put the effort in on their year abroad often come out with JLPT 1. There was this guy who (according to our teacher) had a better accent than our teacher (who is native, obviously XD) did. I took Biology, Chemistry and Physics at A level and got in without any problems, but I did have an A at GCSE German. I think it's more important to show a real passion for the culture and language in your personal statement.

Also I saw people talking about SOAS on this thread, which is where I study so if you guys have any questions just fire away :biggrin:

Reply 5

Squaresquirrel

13

Original post by Schu98

Ooooo interesting! Thanks for the info. Did you know any Japanese at all before you started your course at SOAS? How many people are in your class? And what will you do with this degree in your future?

My only experience of Japanese was a short evening course that I took. It was only about 2 months long once a week but it was run jointly by the Japan Foundation and SOAS, so I think it might of helped as the teachers from my evening course were in contact and well known by admissions.

Class size is tricky, in 'Elementary Japanese' split into 4 groups with GCSE holders being in the highest group (D) and absolute beginners in the lowest 2 (A and B). (If you have an A level or higher you either go into Accelerated Japanese or Year 2. I'm in group A and officially there are about 13 of us, buuuuuuuut due to the insane drop out rate and absences and things there is rarely more than 10 in the class, and usually is about 7. You get to know everyone pretty fast which is good, and there is plenty of interaction with the teachers.

As for the future, I want to be a translator, hopefully in a specialised field such as science/technology or medicine or some such. But I'm keeping my options open :biggrin:

(edited 9 years ago)

University Degree In Japanese

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