August 08, 2016 TOPICS

Nurturing Friendship Beyond National Borders

Close Relationships with Language Exchange Partners (vol. 2)

All sessions of the SUP! Language Exchange Program, planned and organized by a student group named SUP! for this semester, have finished.
Following the previous article, we interviewed two language exchange pairs in the AY2016 spring semester.

Pair C from Tuesday 5th Period (Languages: Chinese and Japanese)

Meng Ting Lyu (first-year student, Graduate School of Business Administration) and Kotaro Hattori (first-year student, College of Comprehensive Psychology)

Meng Ting: I participated in this program because my friend invited me and found it interesting because I wanted to talk and chat with Japanese students outside the class. At the first session, I asked my language exchange partner, Kotaro, to check my weakness in Japanese. I am, of course, taking Japanese lessons at the graduate school, but in this program, I am able to learn real Japanese expressions that young Japanese people use in daily life. In addition to the session paper distributed by SUP! coordinators, I learn some formal expressions to use in e-mail exchanges with my professor. Someday I would like to speak Japanese with Kansai accent.
Kotaro: I have been interested in learning foreign languages and joined this program because I find it interesting to learn the foreign language from an international student as well as teach my native language to the student in turn. I found an interesting Japanese pictorial dictionary explaining Kansai dialects and am using the dictionary to teach Meng Ting some example sentences using the words in it.

Meng Ting and Kotaro
Maryam and Tomoya
Pair D from Monday 5th Period (Languages: English and Japanese)

Maryam Zakkiyyah (short-term student) and Tomoya Shiozaki (third-year student, College of Business Administration)



Maryam: I am studying at Ritsumeikan this semester as a short-term student and on this occasion, I was looking for Japanese classes or opportunities to interact with Japanese students within the University. In this program, I learn Japanese from a specific partner in every session, so I feel relaxed to talk with him. Besides the session paper, we are trying several activities such as depicting a scene of a room only by listening to the partner’s explanation. This program consists of eight sessions (90 minutes/session)*, these sessions are regularly held and I am able to know the Japanese language spoken by the younger generation. I think these are attractive points of the program.

Tomoya: When I was a second-year student, I was staying at Vancouver to participate in a one-week intercultural understanding seminar held by the University. After joining the program, I took a leave of absence from the University and continued learning English in Vancouver. The reason why I joined this program was to regularly use English after coming back to Japan.

Through meeting many people in Canada as well as joining this program, I discovered new perspectives of other people and realized that everyday things I took for granted were just a part of life for me, but not for other people.

Registration for the program in the AY2016 fall semester will start late September.
SUP! coordinators are waiting for your registration!

*The number of sessions varies between semesters.

Related information

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August 05, 2016 TOPICS

The Crisis to Save the Drinking Water in Asia

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