Catalog Course Description:

300. Japanese Reading, Grammar, and Culture

Reading and writing emphasizing essential characters, vocabulary, grammar, and culture. First course for returned missionaries.

Extended Course Description:

Welcome to Japanese 300. This course is meant to be a challenging and intense course. The reason that it is described above as the “first course for returned missionaries” is not because returned missionaries will find it easy, but because you will already need significant experience in speaking Japanese in order to survive this class. As a prerequisite, you will need either: (1) the experience of living in Japan for more than a year, or (2) the experience of having taken Japanese classes up through the Japanese 202 level. In this course, we try to catch up to abilities that third-year college students should have in reading, writing and translating Japanese at a basic level.
This class is not designed to be an easy class where returned missionaries will be able to “wing it” just by showing up. On the contrary, most students find that this class demands a significant investment in time and effort in order to understand and really grasp the material.
If you are willing to invest the time and effort to master the material, you will be rewarded with the ability to read and understand e-mails, letters, articles and stories written by native Japanese writers. You will also gain the benefit of a deeper understanding of Japanese. Deeper understanding will result in better retention abilities. On the other hand, if you do not invest the necessary time and effort, this class can become a nightmare of late homework assignments, unread stories, low quiz scores and abysmal midterm exam scores.