Summer Program Information

1. The IUC Summer Program begins on , and ends on , .
2. Morning classes are held 10:00-11:50 five days a week. Afternoon classes are held 12:50-14:40 four days a week. Five afternoon field trips are held, each equivalent to three to four class hours. There are 140 contact hours in total for the seven-week program.
3. Average class size is eight students. Total enrollment and number of teachers determine the final size and number of classes.
4. No scholarship or financial assistance is awarded by the IUC to students enrolling in the summer program. Questions concerning the applicability of outside sources of financial aid (FLAS, fellowships, etc.) should be directed to the funding agency.
5. The Inter-University Center does not confer academic credit. However, upon request, the IUC can provide a description of the material covered and the number of course hours completed.

The IUC Summer Program is designed for people who desire to acquire professional-level proficiency in Japanese, primarily students who intend to focus on Japan as scholars or to specialize in fields such as law and business, as well as people who are currently employed in work related to Japan. We seek especially to address the needs of those who wish to raise the level of their overall language skills by engaging in cooperative communication with fellow students in class.

The Inter-University Center's Summer Program class sessions are focused on advanced spoken Japanese. The objective is to acquire the ability to naturally, correctly, and appropriately express thoughts and opinions. Fifty years of instruction in our ten-month program and our summer courses have demonstrated convincingly that the best way to achieve improvement of one's Japanese is to work on all major skill areas (speaking, listening, writing, and reading, all of which reinforce each other), with emphasis on speaking.

The learning experience in the IUC summer program is enriched by having students from various fields in the same class. Most of the vocabulary one needs for reading and discussion is common to all academic and professional specializations. Students benefit from mutual stimulation and synergies that arise from the encounter of their distinctive backgrounds.

To realize the maximum positive results in the seven weeks of our Summer Program, we place greatest emphasis on two objectives:

1. Increasing students' ability to carry on oral discussions of complex or abstract matters. Students pursue improvement through oral practice of grammatical patterns, drafting and delivery of speeches, and expansion of vocabularies and repertoires of idiomatic and specialized expressions that emerge in discussions among themselves based on readings they do in common.
2. Training students in the style of speech that is regarded as acceptable in formal situations such as graduate school seminars and business presentations to guests or clients.

Field trips provide the opportunity to acquire greater understanding of Japanese culture and society, as well as chances to use Japanese outside the classroom.

1. Students are expected to participate actively in class. They should ask for the views of other class participants and join in constructive discussion and debate.
2. Students are expected to spend several hours a day preparing for the next day's classes, doing homework assignments, writing drafts of speeches, and doing other program-related tasks. For the seven weeks of this Summer Program, they should put aside their research projects and other work and devote themselves to IUC study.
3. In excursions and other extracurricular activities of the Center, students are expected to make active use of the skills they have acquired in class.