Reflection

  Coming into the school year, I was apprehensive about taking Japanese 105. Despite my high school experience, I wasn't sure how I would feel about the level of difficulty, the pace, certain gaps in my Japanese, etc. After the first few classes, I knew that I would have to put in a lot of work. Though I felt comfortable speaking in and listening to Japanese, my kanji and vocabulary were severely lacking. Especially the kanji. It's always the kanji. Since then, I have worked diligently to make significant improvements in my kanji abilities. Keeping a Japanese journal has helped greatly, and making sure to practice the kanji's routinely helps keep me on my toes. Although I still find kanji a great difficulty, I feel as though I have addressed it and made noticeable improvements on it throughout the year. I hope to continue to work on that, along with another weakness of mine: casual speech. I hope that as the years pass, the opportunity to converse often with my other Japanese-speaking friends will increase my capacity to speak fluidly and naturally in casual speech.