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[hikarugenji]

I don't know if there's any connection, but somehow since I sang that multi-hour endless set last weekend, my jaw has felt out of alignment and somewhat sore (if I try to sing again it almost immediately hurts). I'm also having some trouble swallowing, and dry mouth

Comments

[honyakuka]

Hey Kerny, thanks for your comment. So what have you been up to? You're a TA at OSU? How long does their program actually take to introduce kanji? At my school, we learned about 90 kanji in 1st year, and then it increased after that... the only reason I wished we would have learned more is because after taking up to Japanese V, I still couldn't read a frickin book! If you take any other language for that many years in college, you're like a native speaker! Luckily I did a lot of studying on my own, and the translation helped me improve my reading skills a lot, but I still can't read a normal-level book without a dictionary if I want to know what's going on.

About the jaw pain - it might just be sore. Last summer I had this weird facial/jaw pain and when I went to the doctor she said it was TMJ. She gave me Celebrex, which I didn't take, and it got better after a few weeks. But yeah, make sure you mention it to the doctor if it still hurts.

[hikarugenji]

Kanji are introduced pretty slowly at OSU's program -- they put a lot of emphasis on speaking proficiency. I understand their reasoning but I think the program would benefit from a little more reading/writing practice. The problem is that after 4th year Japanese, you know less than 500 kanji, and there's really nowhere to go after that. 5th year Japanese is basically individual study where you're expected to just read things and look up what you don't know, but there's no opportunity to do any real structured study of kanji unless you do it on your own.

Usually the people that finish the 4-year OSU program can speak pretty well but their reading is horrible.