Japanese Classes

Kobe University`s Japanese language tuition syllabus reads really nicely. It has a 5 classes for different aspects of Japanese nicely streamed for everyone at different ability levels, from Elementary, Upper Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate and Advanced at the top. They even give you a little spiel underneath the class name about what sort of level each class is for, mentioning textbooks you should have studied and the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) level it`s aiming to get you at. They even give everyone a nice little placement test to indicate where you are before you sign up for the classes.

The reality is a little bit different.

When they say "Placement test", what they forgot to say was "Two week long" in front of it. Even then the whole thing is completely screwed up. You do the test and then from the class lists that result from them it seems that the University completely ignores them and just randomly stick people in classes until every all the levels are about the same size. I mean, Monica and I both got put in the "Upper Elementary class" for reading and composition. Monica is a Japanese Major student, and has had 2 years of a VERY grammar and writing/reading focused course and takes the Upper Intermediate and some of the Advanced courses, while I`m solidly Intermediate level. Not only are we not remotely close to each other in terms of writing ability, we were both being told to sit through what ended up being 1.5 hours of "My. Name. Is. Thomas. I. Come. From. Scotland". Needless to say immediately after this I ran to the teacher of the Intermediate class and requested a transfer (Monica had the sense to ignore the whole thing in the first place and go straight to Upper Intermediate. This has pretty much been my policy ever since.)

Oddly enough, nobody seems to care that half of ever class transfers to a different one after the first lesson. I guess this happens every year, in which case: CHANGE THE FRIKKIN TESTS!!!

It`s not even only the tests which are completely nuts, the levels are nowhere near balanced. Elementary and Upper Elementary are practically identical in terms of content, Intermediate is a massive jump from Upper Elementary, but still way below Upper Intermediate and Advanced.

There`s also the oddly named "Special Japanese" module which is a grammar module and appears at Intermediate level and above. Intermediate level is supposed to follow on from the Minna no Nihongo 2 textbook and get you to JLPT level 2 by the end of it. Class 1 covered stuff we did in Minna no Nihongo 1... This would be ok normally, but "Special Japanese II", the Upper Intermediate class is listening only, and "Special Japanese III" covers the sort of grammar that native Japanese speakers have trouble understanding.

Basically, the whole system is geared towards either people who have never studied Japanese before or Korean and Chinese students who`ve studied Japanese all through primary and high school; anyone in the middle is a bit stuck :-(