Japanese 102 Pronunciation Exercises: Spring 2016 Goals and Objectives

The new semester has begun, and that means it's time for the weekly Pronunciation Exercises for Japanese 102 to begin. This semester, I have one goal from last semester that I really  want to focus on: speaking and understanding speech at a natural pace. While I improved quite a bit throughout last semester, I am still understanding and speaking words at a (very) sub-par rate. As a lesser goal, I also want to continue refining my ability to perceive and reproduce the natural flow of pitches throughout words and sentences. I've gotten a lot better at this, but every once in a while I still notice myself making mistakes.

With those two goals in mind, here are the steps I plan to take:

• Attend office hours every week.
• I will alternate attending Shibata-Sensei's office hours and one of the other Senseis' office hours every other week.
• Watch one episode of anime every day, paying close attention to how the characters speak.
• This should be easy enough; the hard part will be limiting myself to one episode per day so I don't fall behind on other work!
• Attend the Japanese language table at least once a month.
• Hopefully, I will attend the language table more frequently than that, but once a month is a bare minimum.
• Review vocabulary every day, saying (and writing) each word several times to drill the proper pitch pattern into my brain.
• So far, so good--although we are only three days into the semester!

I fully intend to stick with and achieve all the goals and objectives I've set for myself--after a rocky first-half of last semester, I realized just how important making and sticking to a plan is for being successful in class, and I don't want to fall behind this time!