Liam Kingshott studied Japanese language modules with CEWL as a part of his BA in Asian Studies and English Language and Linguistics.
I studied Japanese a bit before coming to Kent, but I never had the chance to engage with the language and to use it in a natural setting. The Japanese classes at CEWL have been a great way to develop this; they cover a wide range of topics so now I can talk about a broader range of subjects than I could in the past.
My lecturers helped me to sound more natural with my Japanese. Even though we use textbooks and different materials made specifically for language learning, they taught me how to sound more natural in informal and formal situations, which are skills you definitely can’t learn from textbooks or online resources alone.
Moodle is used to facilitate the class. The lecturers put all of the materials we need week by week onto Moodle as well as links to different websites to help us improve our language skills. They also upload a detailed grammar chart of everything that’s covered weekly in class, which was very handy when it came to revising for exams because it laid out each specific topic we’d covered.
At university often lectures and seminars are very formal, whereas the Japanese classes were always quite informal.You were encouraged to speak as much as you could in Japanese. I always looked forward to them because it was a fun environment.
I’ve recently accepted an offer to study a Master’s in Japanese Studies. When I finish studying, I am hoping to eventually start a career in games localisation, which is the translation of video games and the advertisements related to these games.
My goal in taking Japanese classes was to get the highest level of Japanese that I could at an undergraduate level. And I’ve definitely achieved that. I think I would be at a much lower level if I hadn’t studied Japanese with CEWL.
Find out more about the World Language modules offered by CEWL.