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Friday, February 14, 2020

Learning Japanese

Ohayou Gozaimasu! Two years ago I tried to learn Nihongo. I enrolled in an online class and did a 1:1 class with a sensei who was based in England. She was the most wonderful and patient teacher. I did make progress and was stringing sentences together already. I also learned a bit of hiragana which helped me a lot when I visit Japan.

Beautiful cherry blossoms in Tokyo.

Nihongo is a beautiful language although quite hard to learn. I did a trial for a Chinese class, but I really struggled with pronouncing syllables and that's why I elected to learn Nihongo instead. My sensei said I pronounced words very well and we attributed it to how similar it is to how we pronounce words in Filipino.

Elevator self-we with Japanese educators + my forehead haha.

In the beginning I was taking notes on a small notebook. I had a hard time taking notes and it made it hard for me to review. I realized I was doing things wrong! I decided to use two Chromebooks for my online classes. One was for the platform my teacher used to teach me and another one for notetaking.

My sensei said I improved a lot during that time. She asked me what did I do differently and I showed her my notes. I was completing my homework much faster as well. Me and my sensei had a great partnership because she taught me Nihongo and I taught her how to properly use Google tools for distance learning.

Akihabara at night.

We used Google Calendar to set up our Google Hangout calls and we used screenshare so I could follow where she was on the online workbook, then I used Google Spreadsheet for my notetaking. It was so easy and my sensei said it made it much easier for her to use the tools for her other students as well.

I miss my sensei. I ended up just completing one year because that was the time I was found to have PE. I could've enrolled again, but I'm now doing a different market. Learning a new language though was a great challenge for me and maybe I'll do it again someday. 

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