KUGF Course Guide 2018

19/20

Communication in Japanese Society(Learning Kansai I)In this course, students will learn about community life and culture in the Kansai region. They will become most familiar with where they live, northern Osaka (e.g., Suita City) in terms of their people, geography, sociocultural history, social issues, and contemporary developments. The students will be given chances to communicate with the residents in the region during the course. Kansai-ben, or local dialects will also be a part of their learning in this class. Required level of Japanese: this class will be conducted in Japanese. LEVEL 3 or higher in the Kansai University Japanese language program (JLPT N4 or higher) is strongly recommended for those who are interested in taking this course.2 creditsSpring SemesterFall SemesterCommunication in Japanese Society(Learning Kansai II)In this course, students will learn about community life in the Kansai region. The focus of the classes will be on 1) suburban communities in Kansai, 2) how business is conducted in Osaka, and3) how people established new businesses in the Kansai region, by reading related materials, visiting companies, and/or listening to business people.2 creditsSpring SemesterFall Semester2 creditsSpring SemesterFall SemesterCommunication in Japanese Society(Business Japanese)The next challenge for those who have reached the proficiency in Japanese in terms of managing various academic contexts in the university is to cultivate a further pragmatic communication skills in work-based contexts. Business Japanese requires one to have a good foundation of Japanese language knowledge and demands further competence in various social interactional tasks, such as negotiating, collaborating, making inquiries, synthesizing, and managing conflicts. Being able to handle these complex actions in Japanese as a foreign language in business settings would be a highly valued asset for the students who seek their career in a Japanese corporation or Japan-related organizations overseas.Contemporary Japan (Japan in Mass Media II)In this course, students will learn about Japan and how various aspects of Japan (e.g., culture, contemporary living styles, social issues, people, etc.) are portrayed in mass media. The course will take a broad view of what constitutes ‘mass media’, and will consider such sources and materials as television, paper-based media such as newspapers and magazines, internet-based mediums (e.g., online news, SNS), smartphone/tablet-based mediums (e.g., apps), film, and various forms of animation. Required Levels: Students must be taking level 5 or above Japanese language course concurrently with this class.2 creditsFall Semester2 creditsSpring SemesterFall SemesterCommunication in Japanese Society(JPN Corporate Culture)Having studied Japanese language in general during the university years, one will most likely be expected to make use of anyone who wishes to work for a Japanese company is most likely expected to use appropriate Japanese language skills in business situations. Pragmatic work-based communication skills may be different from "academic Japanese skills" in various ways. This class will help students develop Japanese business communicative competency. The students in this class will be exposed first to various business fields in Japan. There may be some guest speakers who are at the frontline in these fields during the semester. The students will prepare themselves by building vocabulary specific to business communication and various pragmatic communication styles that are used specifically to business interactional contexts. The purpose of this class is to get a general understanding of Japanese corporate culture(s), which will be highly useful for those who may seek employment in Japan or in Japan-related organizations and corporations overseas. The whole class will be conducted in Japanese language with some scaffolding assistance for language learning, adopting a pedagogical approach called CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). 2 creditsSpring SemesterFall SemesterField-Based Learning(Society and Workplace Culture in Japan）In this course the registered students will individually conduct a field research at an appropriate site such as in a Japanese company, a foreign company in Japan, or at other organizations (e.g., NPO) in Japan. The students will gain work-based experience through this field study. They will be able to cultivate their cultural literacy for Japanese business management, and furthermore, they will be able to develop their skills for practical business communication in practice. In the first half of the course, students will be given instructions on how to carry out a qualitative ethnographic research in a field; the students will be exposed to the methods such as participatory observation, data analysis approaches such as (critical) discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and various qualitative interpretation approaches. As a final task of this course, the students will be expected to produce a final research paper with a specific topic focus, based on the field experience. The workload hours for the field study will be determined individually, according to an agreement between each student and the hosting site.Course Guide 201817