Japanese

This course discusses Media Law, focusing on defamation; hate speech law; freedom of the press, and State secrets, etc. 

The course is designed to expand kanji and vocabulary at low intermediate level and increase vocabulary written in kanji.

This course enhances communication skills focusing on interview, discussions and debate. The goal is "to communicate without reading," and by summarizing each activity in a conversational format, students are trained to listen carefully to what the other person is saying; confirm what they are saying, and naturally respond by agree or disagreeing.  The second half of the course develops the ability to speak at paragraph level with reasons and specific examples, while expanding vocabulary, to state one's opinions.

Note: Intermediate Japanese language levels at the host university are comparable to UC upper-division language courses.

By the completion oft his course, students are expected to read, write and type 160 basic kanji characters. They will become familiar with the basic methods of kanji learning and expand their vocabulary of words that contain kanji.  

Eligibility: Those who are learning kanji for the first time and are currently taking a C1 class or have Japanese proficiency of C1 class or above. 

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the meanings and readings of 160 kanji and words using those kanji. 
• Write the 160 kanji vocabulary words with the help of example models.
• Type short sentences containing the 160 kanji on a smartphone or PC. 

This course includes critical and sociological considerations on various social problems related to contemporary families in Japan. 

It is sometimes difficult to discuss or even think about marriage and family because it is too close, too natural or too emotional. This course aims at acquiring basic skills and knowledge to discuss family issues through lectures and group discussions in class.

Relatively new approaches and concepts including modern family, gender studies, queer theories and dependency theories are expounded to address controversial family problems such as Konkatsu (spouse hunting), Ikumen (active fathering) and Shoushi-ka (fertility crisis), etc.

This course examines the significance and issues of gender differences, sexuality in society from the perspective of human rights theory. It studies the current status and issues of gender equality in Japan and discusses gender issues in terms of politics,  employment, family, health, and academia.

This course covers the foundations and growing applications of Web computing, ranging from web crawling, search, and mining to recent trends in natural language processing on the Web. The course is designed to help students understand the fundamental notions and software technologies underlying Web information services. Topics covered: frontiers in web computing; natural language processing for text processing; foundations of information retrieval; advances in information retrieval; information extraction from documents; from information extraction to knowledge acquisition; social network analysis and recommendation systems, and web service mashups. 

This course focuses on explaining social and cultural phenomena to accurately understand Japanese society today. It focuses on topics such as family, gender, education, friendships, work/labor, and political/social movements. Audiovisual materials will be utilized. 

To understand the complex and multifaceted reality unique to Japanese society, students will broaden their horizons and acquire a comprehensive and comparative perspective on society as a whole.

This course examines the concept of "plain Japanese" theoretically and practically, studying it from various angles. The course aims to develop practical skills of writing and speaking based on the principle of "plain Japanese."

Hangul is the name of the alphabet used to write the Korean language.  This course begins by learning the letters and pronunciation of modern Korean, as well as grammar points such as polite expressions that correspond to "desu, masu" in Japanese; designates that are roughly equivalent to the English be verb; existential verbs that express presence or absence of objects; interjections; proper number words; negative expressions, and past tense. 

No prior knowledge is required to take the course, but students are recommended to study the letters and pronunciation thoroughly, especially during the first month. 

By the end of this course, students are expected to write a simple diary during summer vacation.