JLC- Mason Brianna

Looking back at the past year, I can confidently can that I have improved and grown so much. Even though I wasn't able to put as much effort as I would have liked this past semester in class, I feel like I would just be being mean to myself if I denied that my skills in Japanese have not gotten better. My goals that were set in August really revolved around my confidence and mentality, but the stress of finally starting on my journey to become a healthcare practitioner really helped me see that trying to force that confidence is more detrimental than letting it come with time and experience. As classes went on, I found that my goal changed to become more relaxed in that I wanted to try an approach of casual learning.  Even when I was a child learning English, I really learned by just 'feeling' out the grammar and way things were said and being corrected when I was wrong. I would like to try that for a little while to see how it works with language learning as an adult. I th...

Reflection: For this report, I chose to do two informational picture books: one about swallowtail butterflies and the other about bread. I happen to really love animals and food topics, so I enjoyed reading both. After reflecting on the styles of the previous books- and the culture information around some of the types of bread in Japan- I found the latter to be almost a little too easy to read. It wasn't any less enjoyable, and I did learn information, but the book about bread actually seemed to mesh really well for me. On the other hand, a lot of the more niche vocabulary used in the butterfly story through me off and had me second guessing my intuition on what was happening in the book. This led to a little bit of frustration, but I carried on after some time to calm down, and I was able to read through it after a few tries. I appreciate that that happened even though at the time I was upset, because it helped me realize that there are times when it is appropriate to take a break...

 Reflection: While both of these stories might be considered picture books- and that does help when dealing with more unfamiliar vocabulary- the two have very different content. My first book in this investigation is about a man named John and his trip to Japan and what he does with a friend he meets on the plane there. My second book, however, is simply listing out information about bananas and their history with Japan. The first feels more like an actual story, since it revolves around daily life, and the second was surprisingly a little more confusing since the information actually started to blend together a little. While initially I thought that staying on one topic might be easier to understand, it was a little strange to find out that since the author goes into much more detail when speaking about the bananas, I found it was easier to get the information mixed up on my first read through.