Student Voice: “Virtual Winter Program 2022” JPL355 Higher Intermediate Japanese (Online) : Issues in Contemporary Japan②

In the Winter Program 2022, international students from the ?Australian National University, University of Canterbury, and Nanjing University in JPL355（Higher Intermediate Japanese online: Issues in Contemporary Japan), as well as AIU students in JAS355 (Critical Issues in Globalizing Japan), collaborated on a project to interview various Japanese people about their “working styles”.

The following website introduces interviews conducted by students. Please see interview in Winter 2022.

https://jpljas355.wixsite.com/akitaworklife/byyear?lang=en

Here is a comment from Ms. Wangshu HUANG, an international students who participated in the Virtual Winter Program 2022.

Ms. Wangshu HUANG, Nanjing University, China

Ms. Wangshu HUANG

I was seeking an opportunity to improve my Japanese speaking skills when I checked the information on the website of the International Centre of my home university. This Winter Virtual Program (2022) of AIU caught my eyes. It not only focused on students’ language ability, but was designed to inspire their thoughts on ‘working style’. As a graduate student, I had been thinking over my career for a long time, wondering what I would like to do in the future. I thought this program was what I wanted.

The main part of this program was conducting an interview online. Our group has interviewed a Japanese sweets craftsman in Kanagawa Prefecture. I felt most impressed by two things. For one thing, our interviewee talked a lot about the basic occupational training he had gone through, including learning skills from his future rivals. As a result, I somehow began to think about the connection between what I am doing at present and what I will be in the future, in a way I had never thought of before.

As for the other, I think it was a good way to learn from group work, especially with partners, with whom you could only communicate online. My partner from AIU spent several days revising the machine-transcribed draft into a version that was easy to read. Still, I was struggling to read it and was unable to do any editing due to my Japanese level. I had to translate it into English, and reorganized it into a new article. Then I looked for the corresponding sentences in the original Japanese draft according to the edited English article, rearranging them into a whole. Finally, I asked my AIU partner to check and polish the Japanese language. It was a complicated process and we discussed quite a lot, but thanks to my partners, we finally accomplished it.

Even though I had to take classes on the first day of Chinese New Year, I really enjoyed this program. It gave me great confidence when I realized that my Japanese was understood. The Japanese language was more of a way of communication during this program, instead of a mere target. We have met people from diverse backgrounds, listening to their various experiences and thoughts on working style. I feel now that I might have got closer to an answer to the question ‘what I would like to do in the future’.