Tag: Japanese

On October 21, 2017, the Department of Languages hosted the 45th Annual Declamation Contest. This poetry recitation contest brings together middle- and high-school students from the region, who come to the Clemson campus for the day to show off their language skills. This year, 490 students from 31 middle and high schools in South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina registered to compete in ASL, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian and Spanish. Clemson students also volunteered to help with registration and supervise contest rooms in Daniel Hall.

Competitors recited two poems, a mandatory selection and a second selection. They were evaluated by 67 judges, who included Clemson faculty and members of the community. After the judging was complete, students and their families attended an awards ceremony in Tillman Hall. The event also gave participants a chance to explore the campus, eat in a dining hall, and learn more about the school. Past Declamation participants have attended or are now attending Clemson to study foreign languages.

The contest’s continued success is due to the hard work of the Department’s faculty and staff, especially the Declamation Committee of Su-I Chen, Scott Harris, Melva Persico, Cathy Robison, Anne Carole Salces y Nedeo, Amy Sawyer, and Julia Schmidt.

The 45th Declamation Contest was dedicated in loving memory of Roger K. Simpson, Senior Lecturer of Spanish, who passed away on February 4, 2017. Roger served for 17 years on the Declamation Committee, and his unwavering dedication and commitment to the contest, to his colleagues and to his students will always be appreciated and remembered.

A junior Language & International Trade-Japanese major, Chloe Finley, received the AIG Bridging Scholarship for her study abroad at Sophia University in Tokyo this year. Eighty-eight undergraduate students from colleges and universities across the United States were named recipients of Bridging Scholarships for Study Abroad in Japan. The winners receive awards of $2,500 to assist with their expenses while they study in Japan.

The Japan-US Friendship Commission, an independent federal agency promoting mutual understanding between the United States and Japan, initiated the Bridging Project scholarship program to promote study abroad in Japan by larger numbers of American undergraduate students. The scholarship program is administered by the American Association of Teachers of Japanese, which promotes education in Japanese language, literature, and culture.

Congratulations to Chloe!

From Clemson World:

A group of alumni, former faculty, exchange students and current students are beginning the process to form a Clemson Club in Japan. They recently gathered in Tokyo with a group of about 12, including former faculty members Toshiko and Yuji Kishimoto, at an izakaya (a Japanese gastropub) for drinks and food and then went to an Italian bar. They closed out the evening with another mixture of cultures: a traditional Japanese-style event closing punctuated with the cadence count (see the video below):

https://youtu.be/Eoviddz1FN0

The Department of Languages has established a fund to honor Leslie Williams, associate professor of Japanese, who passed away on July 10, 2014. The Dr. Leslie Williams Memorial Fund will be used for department events, especially Japanese cultural programs and Language and International Trade activities. The fund will be announced at the Language and International Trade Conference on March 9, 2016.

Williams joined the department in 1999. His academic research focused on Japanese pedagogy, Shintô rituals, pre-Meiji Japanese history, and Taoist cosmology and health maximization practices. He served as Director of the Language and International Trade (L&IT) Program from 2012 to 2014 and was the Assistant Chair of the Department of Languages from 2013 to 2014.

Williams had a passion for both teaching and his students. Twice he was named an Outstanding Clemson Professor by the university’s student government, and he also led a student trip to Kyoto, Japan, every other year for ten years.  Outside of class, Leslie played an active role in student life, leading the L&IT Society during the 2013-2014 academic year.

Donations to the fund may be made by check, payable to the Dr. Leslie Williams Memorial Fund, and mailed to Department of Languages, Clemson University, 717 Strode Tower, Clemson, SC 29634.

The Clemson Language Immersion Program celebrated its 20th year of offering students a blend of classroom instruction and cultural activities in the local community. This year’s Japanese program, conducted on campus from May 12 to June 14 under the direction of Toshiko Kishimoto, immersed students for seven hours a day in the target language. Each student took a pledge to use only Japanese for the entire five weeks.

Program activities included field trips, guest speakers, and special art lessons from a certified Japanese calligrapher. During a field trip to Atlanta the group visited the Japanese Governmental Offices, the Japanese division of KPMG (an international audit, tax and advisory firm) and the Atlanta Zoo where each student was paired with a native speaker. This year, the group was honored with an invitation to lunch at the Consul General’s official residence, where they enjoyed an authentic Japanese meal.

A favorite activity was Skype communication with Japanese college students in Japan several times each week. The highlight of the program was a home stay at local Japanese families’ homes. Each student was assigned to a Japanese expatriate’s home (all who work for Upstate South Carolina Japanese firms) where they spent one night and two days joining the families in their daily activities.  Student Dalton Randall found the home stay “one of the hardest yet most exciting things of the program.” He noted that “this social focus makes CLIP a very strong supplement to my traditional classes as it encourages thinking much faster and improvising rather than the planning and preparation one can do for classes.”

The students concluded the program with a party to celebrate their hard work and to say thank you to the Japanese community for its support.  Reflecting upon the five-week immersion program, William Edwards noted that it offered “invaluable experiences that brought the Japanese culture into our curriculum” in a way that allowed students to participate fully in another culture without traveling abroad.