Japanese GCSE

[StrongLegs]

Hi,

My son is thinking about doing Japanese GCSE by studying it himself at home from online teaching materials, and with help from us. We do not speak Japanese, or know any Japanese people.

I wondered if anybody might have experience of doing that and have any hints on how we should proceed?

He is using DuoLingo just now, and I just found this website too:
www.nihongoschool.co.uk/gcse-selfstudy

Thanks!

No direct experience but good for him. I learnt Japanese when living in Japan many years ago- sadly mostly forgotten.

duolingo is a great start but he will need to eventually learn kanji which I don’t think it covers.

hopefully you can find a tutor to help him remotely (or ideally f2f). they must exist. Group lessons online might also be a possibility. But I would say that compared with the European languages it’s a good one to learn independently- pronunciation is quite straightforward once you’ve got your head round the initial sounds. And its structure is far more straightforward and logical than English/French/Spanish- their use of personal pronouns and tenses is far less complex. I’m out of date but there will loads of cool stuff to watch on YouTube too. Watching films with subtitles is a good one too. A surprisingly amount sticks that way.

good luck!

Hi,

Thanks so much for explaining all that. That's exactly what my son says about the complexity of the language. He says Japanese is much less of a faff than French and Spanish, and partly I think if he did Japanese at home as his one language then he would free up one slot at school to do another different GCSE, which I think appeals to him. Also because he really likes Japanese.

Thank you very much.

My BIL is Japanese and my sister’s children are all bilingual. They attend Japanese school on Saturdays to learn writing mainly. My niece who is 14 is now having tutoring from someone based in Japan (over zoom) to prepare for GCSE. I think it might be difficult to learn enough by yourself in a couple of years to take the exam - if you think about MFL at school they’ve usually had 5 yrs+ of lessons. A fantastic skill to have though - my sister did the JET scheme after Uni (lived in Japan, total language immersion whilst teaching English) and had an amazing time.

I am fluent in Japanese. Your son needs a Japanese tutor without doubt. Like all languages, Japanese has many intricacies. I would not want anything other than a native Japanese speaker to teach me.

The trouble with GCSE's like Japanese is that it is mainly native speakers who do it to get an extra GCSE. And even those people need a tutor.

Learning Japanese in itself is a fabulous idea. I'm not sure sitting a GCSE in it is the right direction.
I'm also not sure school will accept an self taught language as an alternative to learning a language at school if it is mandatory. DS1 has brought home an options book and grid today. The first block has purely French and Gernam in it. There is no getting out of a language at that school!

It doesn't seem to be mandatory to sit a language at all at our school and they are happy to host him to the sit the exam paper.

Agree that a tutor or joining a class is essential. I don’t speak any Japanese, but I have studied a number of languages outside a school setting to different levels, including doing a GCSE as an external candidate when I was 16 and another language GCSE as an adult. GCSE tests skills that Duolingo doesn’t build IMO. Listening to audio for gist, participating in a conversation, writing and so on.

Thankfully, it’s very easy to find schools and tutors online now for any language that would be offered for GCSE. Italki and dedicated language schools are good (former is basically a market place for tutors, though, so no guarantee of quality, although I have found the teachers to be of a high standard) and generally offer a free taster.

I’ve studied Chinese with LTL, who also do Japanese, because they offer flexible classes. It was good value. However, they teach levels according to the official language exams of the relevant countries rather than GCSE or A’level.

Thanks, I have just looked about online and there do seem to be good options. I'll have a think about how to find one that would suit him.

I just found a thread on the student room which is very helpful. Here it is in case it's any use to anyone doing the same.

www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3542469

I think for your son to learn Japanese from Duolingo well enough to pass a GCSE is basically impossible.

He is correct that there are features of the language that are much less faff, such as minimal conjugations and no gendered words, but there are other features that are very different from English/French/Spanish like the 3 different writing systems and a grammar that is in subject-object-verb order. You need someone to explain them to you.

You should look at the Japan Foundation list of resources for places that teach Japanese (https://www.jpf.org.uk/language/listofschools.php) but the list is small. I would recommend enrolling in the SOAS course online https://www.soas.ac.uk/study/find-course/japanese-beginners-course.

GCSE level of languages isn't very difficult. The syllabus and the vocabulary list is available online here. I would also recommend if he is serious to take the JLPT www.jlpt.jp/e/ which is the official proficiency exam, but unfortunately doesn't map into European CEDR levels because there is no oral or written (I think) component. You probably need to be about N3 (in the middle) to pass GCSE so it is a good pre-exam benchmark.

DD2 who is studying science started learning Japanese on Duolingo and was able to understand some terms. At uni in her 2nd year, she enrolled on a course on Saturdays with a native Japanese speaker where she also learned Kanji. Due to Covid this was done online. In what should have been her 3rd year, she studied at a Japanese University, although almost all teaching was in English. DD was really pleased that she had done the year's course and was able to use public transport, get a haircut, order food etc. She is now back at her UK university and we have paid for her to do the next level of the course. She is probably just beyond GCSE level now and the teacher has commented on how much more confident she is in speaking.

One of my DC did Japanese GSCE but went to a Saturday language school to study.

My dd did it in about two years although she had picked up bits from watching anime before. She started in lock down and I paid for her to have some lessons with an online tutor as she wasn't doing much else (he was a native English speaker but taught her loads of grammar). There is no textbook for the GCSE but I think this is good: japanese4schools.co.uk/gcse/ Just seen that they do online classes, this is a new thing, we just used it for the printed course.

Things to be aware, my dd's school would have been happy for her to sit the exam there but they didn't have access to any Japanese speakers for the speaking test so she had to go to a private centre which was very expensive and still not straightforward. Also make sure you are aware of the requirements for the speaking test, mine was also doing a language GCSE at school which was AQA, she thought the Japanese speaking test was going to be the same format but it turned out she was meant to have prepared a two minute speech. She panicked but managed to cobble a couple of sentences together! In the end she passed! With grade 7 but it was very stressful at the time for her and I thought she would have been better doing JLPT.

MFL teacher here. MFL is compulsory in all
schools until year 9 and many schools require pupils to take a language to GCSE regardless of whatever other languages they do outside of school. I would be very surprised indeed if a school let him effectively 'drop' MFL completely just because he's doing something outside of school. In other words there's still be an expectation/requirement that they'd do eg French, German or Spanish or whatever for KS3 and/or KS4.

Plus Duolingo is great but it's not going to teach anyone to pass GCSE, especially in a language with a non Roman alphabet. You need a native speaker tutor at the very least which at £40/hr and at least a couple of hours a week for at least 2-3 years is not going to be cheap.

A friend’s DD did both Chinese and Japanese at GCSE with no previous experience. She went onto study Oriental languages at Oxford. She entered competitions and with help from the school (state grammar) found mentors to do regular.conversational Japanese and Cantonese. If you can find someone to augment the self/learning this should be helpful.

DD’s grammar had twilight classes (paid for, take place at lunchtime or after school) for both Japanese and Chinese at GCSE. The teachers who came in just do those lessons also attended a few other schools so if you can find a school that offers similar there may be one who can put you in touch with their teachers.

Thank you very much for all of the messages here. I have found two people online who are willing to give us 1-2-1 lessons over zoom now, so I think we are sorted.

Thank you very much

Hi @StrongLegs I know this is a zombie thread but my child is thinking of doing this as well. How did your son get on? mine just finished y8 so we still have some time, but we want to find a tutor and study at home.
Thanks!