Hello everyone, I’m Levyann Oliva from Group 17 伝統行事. Here I’m going to talk about my personal experience on the project “Virtual Study Abroad Exchange”.

This internship was a great opportunity to improve my Japanese in a pragmatic way. I was able to refine essential skills such as time management, teamwork and communication. 

The project was divided into three parts: chatting with the platform Slack, the blog, and conversation with the other team members and students.

Cooperation and communication were fundamental in the project. On Slack we shared research about various topics, my group’s topic was about “traditional events”. Being able to choose the micro topic every week was a good incentive for us to actively participate.

The blog was good for learning more about the other’s group themes and helped increase our knowledge on Japanese culture.

The Zoom meeting held weekly and the free conversation class were definitely a fun way to share our work and improve our Japanese skills, while getting the chance to meet new people.

This part especially helped me improve my fluency in Japanese. In addition, listening to Japanese people, helped me acquire better understanding on the difference between communication in 敬語 ,丁寧語 and informal speech style.

The only downside I would mention is the vast difference in skill level between participants. Sometimes I had difficulty understanding and communicating with my peers. Even though it was difficult, it was beneficial to learn from native Japanese speakers and my classmates.

Overall I feel like this experience not only helped me grow academically but also as a person. I’m sure that what I learnt from this project will be useful for the future.