Japanese at DCU

morningpeasant

Hello,

I'm thinking about coming to DCU next year to do Japanese. Can anybody share their experiences of the course?

CitizenGeek

I'm in my second year of studying Japanese at DCU and I really enjoy it. It's a little difficult at the outset but once you become familiar with hiragana and katakana (used for writing sounds, instead of kanji which are Chinese characters and are not phonetic), it's just like learning any other language. I actually think it's easier to pick up than French (which I learned at school) because the grammar is generally simpler, so far at least. The lecturers are decent for the most part (although some of the teachers from Japan have a habit of speaking almost exclusively in Japanese throughout the classes which can be frustrating sometimes) and the Japanese society at DCU is very well managed and gives you plenty of opportunities to meet with Japanese exchange students. They even offer weekly conversation classes where you get paired up with an exchange student to practice your Japanese. The library is well stocked with Japanese-related books and the university is very helpful with applications to partner universities for the third year abroad in Japan.

What course specifically do you want to do? As far as I know, you can do Japanese along with another language in an applied languages course or you can do it with international business (which is what I am doing).

morningpeasant

Thanks for the reply
I'm considering studying Japanese with Intercultural studies, with the aim of working in the area of translation studies or something similar.
My main concern is that I've already taken Japanese to Leaving Cert level and have received an A1 grade in it, and I have also spent six weeks in Japan as part of a cultural exchange program. I am wondering if I'll already have covered a lot of the material and if it will just be a waste of my time?

CitizenGeek

Sorry I'm so late in replying! Many of the students in my Japanese class studied Japanese for the leaving cert and they all said that the entire leaving cert course was covered in about 3 months, possibly even less. So I don't think you'll be retreading most of the stuff you've already learned and it's a very bad idea to be complacent in the course just because you've studied it at LC-level.

morningpeasant

Not at all, thank you so much for replying.
That's really good to hear. Can I ask if Japanese is your major or minor? I know at U.L it can only be taken as a minor.