ASIANLAN 123 is the first half of the first-year Japanese course taught through various types of media, mainly anime and manga. It is designed for students who have some prior knowledge of Japanese (hiragana/katakana recognition, basic greetings, etc.) but not enough to test into a higher level. The course incorporates various forms of Japanese media into class activities to improve students’ language skills. This approach not only makes language learning more fun but also increase familiarity with aspects of both traditional and modern Japanese culture that are necessary for language competency. This course also encourages students to become autonomous language learners by providing personalized tasks that students can adapt to their own needs and interests (e.g. drawing original manga).

By the end of this course, students will have:

• built up a repertoire of vocabulary and basic sentence patterns that will allow them to speak about themselves and topics of personal relevance solely in Japanese;
• developed the pragmatic and socio-cultural skills needed to attain a basic understanding of anime, manga, and other Japanese media;
• mastered the hiragana and katakana writing systems and around 50 kanji (Chinese characters); and
• learned to use the Japanese writing system to read parts of the manga and prepared texts and to write about themselves and topics of personal relevance.

Course Requirements:

Attendance, Class Performance & Participation, Assignments, Personalized Projects, Quizzes & Lesson Tests, Final Written & Oral Exam, and Final Project

Intended Audience:

Students across many disciplines who would like to start learning Japanese. The course is not designed for native speakers who: 1) Speak Japanese as first language 2) Completed their high school education at an institution where the language of instruction is Japanese only.