Japanese at university

I'm planning to do a combined honours degree at university with Sociology and Japanese (or with Japanese).
I'm practically a beginner at the language, so, realistically, how well can graduates speak it at the end of the 4 years?
Btw it's 4 years because there's an intermittent year in Japan between the 2nd and 3rd years studying only Japanese. Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

@Quick-use did Japanese at uni I believe and might be able to advise on the extent the language got developed at their uni?

For most Asian (and Middle Eastern and African, for that matter) languages the courses are designed to be studied ab initio, where the students have no prior experience of the language. Because of the intensity of language tuition required for this it's usually uncommon to be able to combine two such languages except in a "major-minor" type combination, and my impression is joint honours between an ab initio language and another subject may be a slightly higher workload than the usual joint honours course as a result.

I imagine the year abroad will help pretty rapidly consolidate and develop the language skills you'll have learnt before that. While not Japanese, I have a friend who minored in German and then moved to Germany, and the first year that he lived there his language ability really expanded in leaps and bounds (especially vocab). Of course it was challenging for him initially but he speaks it much better and more naturally now compared to when he was only studying it in an academic context.

Reply 2

super_kawaii

20

Original post by Bjlip

I'm planning to do a combined honours degree at university with Sociology and Japanese (or with Japanese).
I'm practically a beginner at the language, so, realistically, how well can graduates speak it at the end of the 4 years?
Btw it's 4 years because there's an intermittent year in Japan between the 2nd and 3rd years studying only Japanese. Thanks :smile:

You're generally expected to be a beginner for degrees in East Asian Languages. Generally from my experience, you're expected to be JLPT N2 by the end of the degree, although I do know of people who've passed N1 at the end of the 4 years.

If you major in Japanese, you'll have to use Japanese language academic sources in your dissertation in 4th year

(edited 4 years ago)

Japanese at university

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