Nancy Haddad
July 21, 2023
Beaming down the hallways of Faculty Hall, sounds of the Hiragana alphabet ring from nineteen Governor Scholars who are a part of this year’s Japanese Language and Culture focus area. Over the past weeks, these scholars have grown immensely in their pronunciation skills and perception of Japanese culture abroad thanks to the easy-to-learn teaching methods faculty member John Clayton implements in his everyday classroom.
John Clayton, professor of Japanese Language and Culture studies, expresses his passion for the subject due to his past experiences living abroad in this Northeast Asian country. Clayton’s classroom atmosphere is one of the many classes at the Governor Scholars Program that implement an open-discussion styled room: “Pronounce the word out loud, then write it down”. Scholars repeat this habit to better pronounce each tongue-twisting character of the Hiragana alphabet, which is one of the three alphabets the Japanese language entails.
At the start of week three, scholars engaged in using time stamped sentence structures and number learning, an important skill to master since the Japanese language does not have what the English language would consider “future-tense” verbs. Instead, at the beginning of sentences, words, such as today and tomorrow, time-stamp the sentence so that the listener or reader will know when something is happening. For example, student Lizzy Juddy writes the sentence [Today, the big sushi is expensive] on the board and pronounces it for the class. Another scholar, Jane Locke, writes the sentence: [The red book is 86 yen].
Kicking off the first day of number learning, Clayton writes five numbers in English, then encourages scholars to turn to their partner to test to see if they can pronounce the numbers in Japanese. This style of learning opens up scholars to mistake-making by nature, which allows for more growth as they are exposed to more corrections in their speech. Clayton exclaims, “They are fast learners! I am very impressed with the speed at which they can grasp all of this information.” With only five of the nineteen scholars having prior exposure to Japanese language and culture, whether that be in the classroom or at home, this class is full of advanced language skills and open-minds for new cultural experiences.
