Prospectus

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Language and Culture in Practice: Japanese

Course
2024-2025

Admission requirements

This course is only available for students in the BA International Studies programme who have passed Japanese 1 Beginners and Japanese 2 Pre-Intermediate. If students have not yet passed Japanese 3 Intermediate, they are expected to follow that course alongside the Japanese in Practice course.

Description

In this course, you will put into action the linguistic and cultural knowledge and skills that you have acquired during Japanese 1, 2, and 3. You will apply your knowledge of Japanese to authentic texts related to International Studies—in practice, current affairs texts such as simple news articles and short essays.

In the first half of the course, you will engage in topical readings in various fields, combining English-language academic sources with short readings in Japanese to train basic skills in working with Japanese-language materials. In the second half, you will expand these skills to analysing and synthesising material relevant to your own interests and presenting and contextualising this material in a language portfolio.

Course objectives

By the end of the course, students will be able to locate and interpret written Japanese materials that can serve as data or reference for a (research) project in International Studies.

More concretely, by the end of the course, you will have gained experience in the following skills.

  • You can locate authentic Japanese materials relevant to your own (research) interests using sources such as online newspapers, organisations’ official websites, social media, Wikipedia and blogs.

  • You can determine the meaning of unknown linguistic elements (e.g. vocabulary, grammatical expressions, kanji) in these texts using relevant reference works.

  • You can translate, paraphrase, summarise and contextualise relevant passages from these texts, using relevant reference works and translation software.

  • You can report on your reading of multiple such texts in the form of (collaborative) research reports.

Timetable

The timetables are available through My Timetable.

Mode of instruction

Seminars

Seminars are held every week. Attending all seminar sessions is compulsory. Being absent from more than two of the sessions will result in a lowering of your participation grade (20% of the end grade).

Assessment method

Assessment

  • Assignments
    You will make assignments when preparating for the tutorial sessions. These assignments are discussed in class. Your submission of the assignments and discussion of your findings during the tutorial sessions contribute towards your ‘assignments and participation’ mark.

  • Midterm assignment
    At the end of block 3, there is one integrative assignment to be made during class. During the midterm period, you write a proposal for your portfolio project. Together, these assignments assess the skills and approaches discussed thus far and constitute your ‘midterm assignment’.

  • Portfolio
    During the second half of the course, you will work in small groups researching a topic of choice related to Japan from an International Studies perspective. The short reports you write as part of this research together constitute your portfolio and form the basis of your portfolio mark.

Weighing

Partial grade Weighing
Assignments and participation 20%
Midterm assignment 30%
Portfolio 50%

End Grade

To successfully complete the course, please take note that the End Grade of the course is established by determining the weighted average of all assessment components.

Resit

If you fail this course, you can complete an alternative assignment to compensate a failing partial mark.

Retaking a passing grade

Retaking a passing grade is not possible for this course.

Please consult the Course and Examination Regulations 2024 – 2025.

Exam review and feedback

How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organised.

Reading list

We will use materials available digitally in the public domain or through the University Library Catalogue. Assignments are published via Brightspace.

Registration

General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.

Contact

Remarks

All other information.