Stage 2 Newspaper
The students in Japanese 20 credits Stage 2 are publishing the Japanese newspaper every semester. All of students in this module contribute to this newspaper taking different roles, such as the editors, writers, designers and/or publishers. They select the topics of the articles freely depend on their own interests each time, and they introduce the interesting news in Japan or express their own thoughts or opinions in Japanese. The popular topics are mainly about traditional/modern cultures, fashion, sports, movies/TV shows/anime, famous people etc…so far, and each issue has different contents and styles.
Japanese drama activity
Performing the dramas in Japanese is interesting experience for the students, and also it’s helpful to improve your language skills with a lot of fun! The Japanese drama activity is one of the popular extra-curricular activity and their performances have got very good feedbacks from the audiences. The stories were mostly chosen from famous Japanese literatures, such as “The restaurant with a lot of orders”(by Kenji Miyazawa), “A Scary Manju”(famous traditional comic story) or “Momotaro”(The tale of a boy who went to defeat devils with his animal friends). Moreover, the students sometimes created their own stories or arranged the old story contents to modern styles.
Stage 3 Exchange with Japanese students
Since 2011, Japanese 20-3a students have participated in an exchange project with students at Japanese universities to deliver different experiences. It was designed for students to share and gain different opportunities, to be exposed to authentic Japanese and to explore Japanese culture. Each week has different tasks and sharing of ideas, exploring own/other culture, learning new vocabulary and developing the communication skills.
Stage 3 : Tanka Competition
Japanese 20 Credits Stage 3 students learn Tanka, one of Japan's traditional Poems (with a 31 sounds). Later, the students submit their Tanka to a competition, organised by Echizen City, Fukui. This place claims to have the oldest existing collection of this type of poetry, dating back 1,500 years. According to the Tanka competition homepage, more than 10,000 entries are submitted from all over the world each year. This competition’s topic is "Thinking of you".
Stage 4 Translation project
Manga is introduced as one example of pop-culture in Japan. In Japanese 20 credits Stage 4, the students have translated part of Shūhō Satō’s Manga [Say hello to Black Jack] which won the Japan Media Arts Festival Manga Award. Mr Sato has made it freely available for people to adapt. The students translated from Japanese to Chinese to get a feeling for his work. Enjoy UNNC version of [Say hello to Black Jack]!