Studying and Teaching in Oregon
My name is Nishiyama, who is studying Japanese traditional drama in my master's program while teaching Japanese at Portland State University.
It is my second post! This will be about my experience at the host university. Continuing from the last time, I will write answering questions!
Q. What were the most memorable experiences?
Professors of Japanese literature and Japanese pedagogy are interesting and kind.
In addition to that, while I have aspiration to be a researcher in performing arts in the future, I didn't intend to perform on stage myself at all.
My adviser is a professor of Japanese theater, who organizes the performance of traditional Japanese performing arts every year, so it was almost mandatory for me to participate in it as a actor in Kyōgen (狂言 Traditional comical play) in June.
Theater performance is intense.
I couldn't remember the lines so much that I thought that there was a problem in my brain. (This is an excuse, but I think it was difficult because it's in an old Japanese.) I couldn't practice anything else if I do not have any lines memorized. So, I practiced saying the lines aloud alone in a park near my university. Sometimes, beautiful ladies walked by with their dogs and they might've thought I was a suspicious person. From one week before the performance, I practiced everyday with two other actors who was performing on the same play.
Before, I was thinking the actors should be fun and cool because they get applauds all the time and get popular. Acting was really tough. Now I respect them.
Q. What were the challenges you had? How did you overcome those challenges?
Teaching the 200 level Japanese is quite difficult.
PSU uses the textbook named Japanese: The Spoken Language. The model conversation in the textbook is much longer and the grammar items are complicated.
I am always trying and making errors myself, while receiving advice from my boss or coworkers. As a language teacher, I am getting better bit by bit every day.
Also, recently, I am losing confidence, if any, in the inaccuracy of my English.
As a student at the master's program, there is not much problem except writing papers and presentations. But teaching requires a lot more precise and time-efficient English and I really need to work on it now. As I started to write MA thesis, my supervisor is teaching me how to make my writing better. In order not to be like me, you should study English hard whenever you can.
Q. What did you like about teaching at your host university?
PSU integrates PCA into the whole program, and it requires a lot of effort to prepare lesson plans each time I teach. Overall, I am having enjoyable time learning as a student and being a Japanese teacher.
Because our boss clearly organizes the curriculum, other instructors and I (three other Allies now!) can concentrate on teaching items each day. It's one of the biggest point I like about PSU.
I feel very good each time I teach a lesson well.
Q. What did you like about studying at your host university?
My advisory is enthusiastic and the classes are interesting.
Out of the classes I have taken, the particularly interesting were literary criticism theory (we learn theories like gender criticism), literary criticism theory in Japanese literature, and Japanese linguistics. In the class of literary criticism theory, I learned different perspectives when scholars conducts research. It is a basic class in order for us to be able to understand from what kind of perspective an author writes a paper when I read a paper. Japanese linguistics was a class taught by my boss for teaching Japanese language. It was a valuable experience for me to see a teacher's model, who enjoys what she is conducting her own research. (Of course it should be difficult and take a lot of effort most of the time.)
Oh, and in Portland, the beer is really delicious. There are lots of micro-brewery and we can't count how many craft beers are available, literally there are by far more than I can try. Portland has a wonderful beer culture. I wish I can go out and have a drink every day. I go out occasionally, but I am sad about how little I can take alcohol when I do.
One more! Portland is a fairly large city, but fishing is wonderful here. I can fish black basses and trout in the river, which run through the city. Depending on the season, we can also catch King Salmon.
I went fishing for sturgeon (shark-like gentle fish, which produces caviar) when an Allie of the same year come to Portland the other day. As the state law doesn't allow me to bring back sturgeon, fishing them is catch and release (we release them right after catching them).We caught a lot of them and they fight really well, so later I had muscle pain in my arm and back. But it was really fun.
Although I sound like having fun all the time drinking beer, fishing, I am not doing it as often as I wish because there are teaching responsibility as well as learning as a student.(Obviously) I am in Oregon, a fishing heaven, so I wish I could go fishing more often...