looking forward to graduation for all the wrong reasons

[arisha]

So I don't know if I'm behind, or stupid, or in the wrong class or what, but I am currently taking Japanese 403 and the readings we are doing are so above my level in terms of vocab that I am spending entire days working on nothing but looking up these words. And you think I don't mean that literally but I honestly do. Wednesday and today have felt like completely wasted days to me because wow, what did I do, I looked up all these words and there are too many to have any hope of memorizing them before we finish this reading and move on to the next one. In one LJ community I recently read that one ESL teacher tells her students that if they start reading a book and in one page they find five words they don't know, they should choose an easier book. And so at thirty-plus words I don't know, I think these stories are way above my reading level. I mean, sure it's nice to be like "Yay I'm reading actual stories in actual Japanese," but it hardly feels like an accomplishment if there's this whole dictionary process I have to go through before I can do it. I have no idea how this class can be considered a continuation of third-year classes, it is so intensely different.

And so, and so, the worst part of all of this is. I thought that for tomorrow we only had to read until page 158 of this story. But I just realized I read the wrong day and we're actually supposed to read until 168.

;_; ;_; ;_; ;_; ;_; ;_; ;_;

I am so not in love with school right now.

Edit: Since I don't have time now to do all the vocab I don't know for these extra ten pages in time for class tomorrow, I'm just filling out the vocab list he actually gave us, and omg, here are some of the words on it: 俺　猿 (I wrote "MONKEY!!!" beside it, lolz)　窓辺　魂　抱く　輝き　慣れる. Basically, all of the words that I already know. And so I'm like, does he expect us to already know all the unfamiliar words in the story? Or just ignore them? Despite the fact that there are tons and tons of them and so it's kind of hard to make sense of it without looking them all up? What am I supposed to dooooooooooo??????

athena_crikey, remember those French comic books they had in our high school library where they always defined all the words we learned in seventh grade but let all the difficult words pass by without a gloss?

... Yeah.

Comments

[jazzkittykat.livejournal.com]

I can really sympathize with you. I majored in Japanese as an undergrad, and during my last year, I attempted to take a translation class in which we read Haruki Murakami's After Dark (which was recently released in the U.S., btw). Anyway, this class was a total nightmare and just way above the stuff I had been doing in the prior course. I ended up finding a native speaker to tutor me, which eventually turned into me trying to do as much as I could and him filling in a bunch of the unknown kanji/vocab for me so I could save some time looking it up. It helped me get through the quarter, but then I jumped into a different upper-level track which was much more commensurate with my previous training. Good luck...

correctjapanese was also somewhat useful, if I was in between a rock and a hard place, though I don't know how active it is these days.

[arisha.livejournal.com]

I think it was through your Murakami posts in that community that I started reading your journal! :) I'm definitely impressed you even took that class - a translation class like that at this point would surely be the death of me.

I am signed up for a class next semester that'll probably be a lot closer to what I'm used to - or at least there should be less reading and vocab and things like that, since it's a conversation class. :) Haha, well, I dunno, maybe I'll have to wait and see!

Thanks for the comment! I've calmed down a bit about it now but I definitely appreciate hearing about your similar experience. :)

[athena-crikey.livejournal.com]

I could pretend I do, but not really. I mean, I remember the comics, but I don't remember them having definitions for anything. But I totally know how much fun it is reading a book when there's five words you don't know on a page and you have to always be looking them up, so 30 seems really horrible. Perhaps you could talk to your prof about it? Perhaps you could talk to people in other sections and if they're doing more reasonable things switch?

[arisha.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about sending my prof a quick e-mail, because I've talked to two others in the class and they're both intimidated by the class too, but then in Monday's class I actually knew what was going on the whole time and so I calmed down a lot about everything. (And we had a quiz which I think I aced. :) ) I probably should still ask what he expects of us regarding vocab retention, though, or something ...

Perhaps you could talk to people in other sections and if they're doing more reasonable things switch?

lulz, UVic is not UBC, Athena!! xD I think the only Japanese classes at UVic to have more than one section are the first-year classes. Japanese 403 has a grand total of five people in it. xDD It's good in terms of knowing all your classmates and also someone is finally forcing me to talk in class, but at the same time I am kind of terrified of falling behind. o_o 481, which I'm taking next semester, currently has four people enrolled in it. It's Academic Japanese and I have no idea what to expect but I'm hoping it'll be good because it's being taught by the same prof I had for my first two Japanese classes at UVic, and she's awesome. :)

More ramble you didn't ask for: 315 is Advanced Composition (six people in it) and I wanted to take it this semester but it's at the same time as one of my required PACI classes, so. :( 314 is Advanced Comprehension and Conversation (aaaah more talking) and I have that next semester (right before 481, hahaha, it will be like two and a half hours of intense Japanese o_o ) and zomg, I am shocked to see there are 22 people signed up for it. WHAT HAPPEN--!!