PE 2 Reflection and PE 3 Goals

PE 2 Reflection:

I feel like I have made significant progress in both speaking and understanding Japanese in these past few weeks. Preparing for the oral midterm forced me to really practice speaking at a natural pace and understanding what other people are saying, and after finishing it, I realized that I am finally at the point where I feel like I could have a conversation with someone (a very restricted conversation, but a conversation nonetheless) rather than simply being able to introduce myself. Although there is still a long way to go before I will actually feel comfortable speaking to others in just Japanese, I feel pretty happy about my current progress.

PE 3 Goals:

·         Work on pitch patterns and sentence intonation

·         Focus on practicing grammar, particularly the conjugation of adjectives and verbs and use of particles

·         Try to hold more conversations in Japanese with other people

PE 3 Activities:

·         Remember to listen to the vocabulary sections in new chapters to familiarize myself with their pitch patterns (I have started doing this recently and I feel like it helps a lot, although I still have trouble internalizing the pitch patterns)

·         Actively use grammatical structures that I have trouble remembering (such as past tense and negative form) in conversation

·         Go to office hours to practice speaking and listening (particularly listening, as I feel like I have a hard time hearing what people say when they use words or phrases that I haven’t learned yet)