Now that it's been around 2 years since my university study abroad experience, long enough for those experiences to fully sink in, I feel it is due time to reflect on the goals I wrote about before leaving to Japan for this third time around.
During my year of study abroad at Dokkyo University in Japan I very certainly experienced many new perspectives of Japan as a whole. The first time around I was a high school student, so of course I didn't have any money or free time for that matter, the second time I was in the U.S. military so the way people expressed themselves to me was quite different than the first or third times I lived in Japan, considering I was not an ordinary citizen or visitor that makes a lot of sense! The third time was this time, as a university student, and it was quite different than the other two times. I had much more freedom and got to really develop a social life outside of whatever organizations I was affiliated with and really got to engage with my setting more deeply. I made many friends, could travel around freely and readily, more or less got to make my own schedule for things and utilize transportation of my own volition. All-in-all it provided a lot of new insight into what it means to exist in Japan, and when coupled with my previous two experiences, really makes me feel like I've experienced a well rounded variety of life in Japan. The overwhelmed public school life, uniform and all, the military personnel that you see awkwardly engaging Japanese culture (where I typically acted as a mediator for my fellow service-members to help them acclimate to a new culture, often times serving as a translator in many instances), and finally as a regular adult citizen with my only limitations being to accomplish my studies and pass my classes. There are many differences in these experiences, but now I feel experienced in a way I could not have claimed before my study abroad at Dokkyo, in a way that I can academically engage in dialogue about Japan and Japanese culture, traditions and customs. By engaging in the goals that I had laid out prior to leaving, that newfound closeness to Japanese culture was something I could accomplish. My ultimate goal was to see what opportunities came my way, engage them as fully as I can muster and to make of the most of that situation, enjoying it as much as possible. I feel that this was accomplished and as a result my study abroad experience certainly gave deeper meaning to all my prior experiences in Japan.
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While there are many things that I wish to accomplish in Japan, the things that come to mind primarily are:
Many of these fall into similar lines but I feel there is enough difference between them that they deserve their own emphasis. Ultimately, I think the most important thing to do is to enjoy yourself and to make the most of the opportunities that come your way. That's the key to maximizing study abroad. The language learning process is different for everybody. In an immersion setting, what I've found to be most important has been to be ok with making mistakes. When you're trying to wrap your mind around word choice, sentence structure and grammar use, mistakes are inevitable. Taking an apprehensive approach at speaking will only serve to hinder your linguistic and personal growth. Others will find you more approachable and will want to be around you more readily if you are capable of laughing off your mistakes and work through them.
Some other helpful approaches might be: 1. Insert yourself into situations where you will get to use the language. 2. Listen to what happens around you and try to get the gist of what others are talking about or doing. 3. Listen to talk shows on the radio or watch TV and movies in the host language. 4. Try to emulate the speaking patterns of others to help yourself feel more natural when you speak. 5. Be willing to ask about things you don't understand. 6. Familiarize yourself with a situation as best you can before entering those situations yourself. This will help you to feel comfortable in the situation and not feel as overwhelmed. 7. Look for key words so that you might infer other meanings. 8. Don't feel discouraged when someone doesn't understand you or you don't understand something. More often than not people are happy to simplify their speech or teach you a key word you didn't recognize. 9. Contextual clues are your friend. A huge portion of communication is body language and you can pick up a lot by tone of voice, the immediate reactions of others and general body movements. Most of these boil down to one thing: Awareness. Be aware of your surroundings and try to interpret what you don't understand or recognize. This gets overwhelming and stressful the longer you have to maintain that level of awareness, but as you get better with the language the environment begins to feel more natural and easy to understand as well. Some good cultural learning strategies to bear in mind while traveling include but are not limited to: 1. Try to consider in what ways the host culture might view things differently from yourself (such as individuality, independence, etc). 2. In the face of a problematic encounter try to consider what cultural values might be involved. 3. Cultural accidents will happen, so it's important to think about different cross-cultural perspectives. 4. Make distinctions between personal, cultural and universal behavior as early as possible. 5. Analyze things that happen in my host country that seem strange to me from as many perspectives as I can while considering personal cultural bias. 6. Refrain from making quick judgments or be willing to reconsider any that you might make; don't assume everyone is the same. 7. Investigate common areas of miscommunication so that you might be able to build better relationships. 8. Help others understand you and where you come from by sharing your differences. If others can understand your background, it will help to mitigate misunderstandings and allow others to be more vocal with you about their own cultures. 9. Be willing to try different communication methods so that you can find what works best for you. 10. Respect the way people from other cultures express their emotions. 11. Refrain from disagreeing right away so that you have a chance to try and really figure out what it is that others are trying to communicate. All in all, try to be as openminded and respectful as you can. Doing so will drastically increase how much you are able to experience and really understand those experiences. |