Ethan
School of Political Science and Economics
I participated in the Japanese Chat Club for November and loved it! The atmosphere was nice and quaint, it was conducive in producing cosy chats. Even with my limited Japanese ability (3 months in learning), I was able to practise my listening comprehension and was given plenty of opportunity to chime in when I was able to. There was never an awkward silence or a moment when we could not find something to talk about. The chat club was designed and ran in a structured and a loose way to ensure natural but guided talks.
The chat club had various fun creative ways to spur conversations. For example, they would often have conversation topic sheets available that were easily expanded on. Due to these, I was able to learn a lot of things and talk about interesting topics such as natives’ favourite spots in Japan! In particular my favourite was when we were able to split off into groups based on a particular topic. The topic I chose was what you would do for fun in a day. Furthermore, the mixture of learners and natives made the conversation flow smoothly but at an appropriate level.
In the chat club we typically split up into groups of 4-5, and in each group there were at least two native Japanese speakers. They were able to keep the conversation flowing in a natural manner. The learners kept it grounded at an appropriate level to learn.
All in all, I really enjoyed the Japanese Chat Club and would highly recommend it to anyone of any level!
