Joshua

Certified Tutor

I lived in Japan for a year learning about both the culture and the language. By the end of my time there, I was credited by my sense I for having enough knowledge to work within a Japanese company, but not quite enough yet to be considered fluent. I then returned to my original, attending school at the University of North Texas. From there, I graduated with a minor in Japanese, and furthermore became the first person to receive a Japanese Certificate from my university, which acknowledges that I am proficient enough in Japanese to successfully operate at the business and professional level. Since then, I have continued my own personal study and development of the language, in hope of one day becoming fully fluent. In the 3 years in which I have been learning Japanese, I have found that one extremely effective way to solidly and maintain my language skills is through actually teaching the language myself. Although I have only done this with the English language, I have tutoring experience with people of all ages. Most of my past tutoring experience have been with students/young adults, but I also have experience tutoring those far older than myself. Having actually been taught Japanese by Japanese people, and having actually lived and worked part-time while I was there, I do feel that there is a lot more that I can offer (and arguably in much more effective ways) as a tutor than simply just remembering kanji characters.

What does a typical tutoring session with me look like? To start off, I typically would like for us to get to know each other a bit better, so that we can figure out what exactly and in what ways you are wanting to progress in Japanese. This also allows me to understand better which types of teaching methods would work best with you. If you are already learning Japanese through your school, then we will mainly work alongside your already assigned topics, or alongside your issued text book, while also incorporating a little bit of information and tips from my own lesson plans. The important thing to note is that I will be very careful not to overloading you with lots of new things to learn from me, while you are also dealing with new lessons from your school's Japanese class. However, if you are not enrolled in your school's class, then typically each meeting will be comprised of us going through a listening, speaking, reading, and writing section, thereby covering a little bit of each part of the language as a whole. Through each section, I will steadily introduce new vocabulary, phrases, grammar points, kanji characters, and even points of interest about the culture. At the end of each lesson, we will briefly review all new material, and I will typically assign homework that requires you to write or talk about something that incorporates some of the new material we just covered. It should be noted that the amount time we spend on one section for each meeting will highly depend on the number of times we meet up each week. With that, it is also important to note that your progress will depend heavily on the amount of time you spend practicing and learning Japanese. Once you have proven to be proficient in basic communication, we will then work towards speaking English only when necessary, and then even further towards only communicating in Japanese. I have personally been taught Japanese by both U.S. and Japanese schools, and I find this method to be undoubtably the most effective way for students to progress in proficiency. We will cover anything and everything from useful kanji, natural expressions, writing and speaking differences, formalities, cultural influxes, and much more. You can be anywhere from beginner to intermediate, so its okay if you only need to strengthen grammar expressions, or or if you are having trouble simply remembering the differences between hiragana and katana. And if you dont know anything, than thats okay too! Because I guarantee, no matter what your level is, you will always leave our lessons having learned and remembered more than one new thing at a time.

So, what about my character/personality? I love to learn and meet new people, as well as help out in any way I possibly can. I strive to always progress, and will expect you to at least be open to influencing you to be the same. I am extremely adaptable and understanding, which generally makes it easy for me to recognize where you are and how you feel in any given situation. Im also patient and extremely open-minded, so I will try my absolute best to help you in the most effective ways possible. If for any reason you are just not retaining information, or things are not working out as plan, I will do my best to be as flexible as I can, and figure out new way/methods that are more effective for you! Nothing is more satisfying to me than being able to help someone in a way that makes him/her a better person, and aim honestly believe I will be doing just that by making you more and more proficient in a language other than English. For this reason, I feel I can be a great tutor for essentially anyone and everyone who is willing to come with an open mind, and lots of determination to tackle one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world. If you're still not sold, I strongly encourage you to please message me with any questions or concerns you may have, so that we can work together towards improving your language skills!