June 18, 2010
Temple University, Japan Campus (TUJ) will launch a new major in Japanese Language from the Fall 2010 Semester. The new major will break important new ground by enabling students pursuing a U.S college degree to spend their entire four years of study in Japan, developing and deepening their Japanese language proficiency.
Befitting its status as the branch campus of an American university, currently all classes at TUJ are taught in English. As a result, Japanese language proficiency is not mandatory for international students who comprise over half of the undergraduate student body. Recently, however, many of these international students have expressed a desire to stay and work in Japan after graduation. Consequently the need to achieve advanced proficiency in the language to enable them to find jobs has grown significantly. Since the existing Japanese minor offered at TUJ did not provide the level of language skills to meet this need, the new major was created.
The Japanese Language major will only be offered at the Japan Campus. This means students taking this major are expected to spend the entire four years required in Japan. Currently, there are number of American universities offering Japanese language majors which include study-in-Japan opportunities. However, the in-Japan component is usually limited to one semester, and in some cases one year. TUJ’s new Japanese Language major will be the first US four-year degree program in Japanese language to be taught entirely in Japan.
Students studying the new major will be able to major in Japanese alone, but many students are expected to take it as part of a double major, combining their Japanese studies with one of the other nine majors offered at TUJ*. For this reason, the curriculum has been designed to allow double major that will provide TUJ students with unique strengths that combine multilingual skills, with a proficiency in English and Japanese at a minimum, together with knowledge of a specific discipline and the benefits of a rigorous liberal arts training.
The new major offers a practical curriculum that will be taught almost entirely in Japanese. In the second year, Language Skills courses such as Kanji, Advanced Oral, the Structure of Japanese Language, and Advanced Japanese Writing will be introduced, allowing students to strengthen specific language skills. The major also requires Area Studies electives that will allow students to explore interdisciplinary studies by choosing a number of content courses in related disciplines such as political science, business studies, history, sociology and literature that focus exclusively on Japan.
The new major aims to give students language proficiency level at graduation on a par with the N2 level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) or its equivalent. TUJ anticipates 40 to 50 students will enroll in the program in the first year.
The new major highlights TUJ’s proactive response to the needs of its students and the wider global community for skilled international human resources. The campus continues to produce truly international graduates, representing a diverse selection of nationalities from around the world equipped with multilingual skills, professional knowledge, and the capacity for critical thinking.
Note:The majors currently available at TUJ are:
International Business Studies, International Affairs, Communications, Economics, Art, Asian Studies, Psychological Studies, Political Science and General Studies.