Japanese Language Assistant Program 

In 2023 Ballarat High School will resume the Japanese language assistant program! Kana Takahashi will spend next year with our Japanese students, helping them learn both the language and culture of Japan.  We still need a host family (or families) for her so if you are able to host for all, or part of the year, please get in touch with Simon Coles via the school.  She is very keen to come and work here. 

Please enjoy her self-introduction:

My name is Kana Takahashi. There are 4 in my family, my mother, two brothers and me. Now, I’m a second-year student of Global Business Course at the University of Hyogo. I study international economic and marketing in English. I live in the international dorm in my university with two international and one Japanese student. I’m good at cooking, especially Japanese cuisine. When I go to Australia, I want to cook for you! In addition, I’m into Rakugo these days. If you are fine, I would like to practice English Rakugo and Japanese Rakugo with you.

Secondly, I’ll talk about my experience abroad and my English skills. When I was a third-year student in junior high school, I went to New Zealand for about 10 days as part of a homestay program. It was one of the biggest turning points in my life. Before experiencing homestay, I thought foreign countries were a totally different world since I had no idea what it was like outside Japan. However, I realized that those who live in New Zealand were very kind and friendly, they had warmth just like the Japanese. Now, I love to communicate with people regardless of their nationalities. Although I don’t have brilliantly high scores on the TOEFL or TOEIC, I am confident that my compassion and motivation is second to none. I’m an English learner and it is difficult to communicate like native speakers now, yet I can communicate with you by using gestures, eye contacts and body language. Of course, I promise to do my best to brush up on English before meeting you.

Finally, I would like to tell you the reason why I applied for this internship and my zeal. Firstly, I would like to share Japanese culture with Australian students and residents. In my university life, I’ve exchanged many cultures with various international students since about half of the students of my course are international students from different countries. Through intercultural communications, I realized the interest in exchanging cultures. If I could help students to study in your school, I will teach the interest of exchanging cultures, especially Japanese living cultures. As a representative of Japanese, I would like to share the virtues of Japanese culture.

Secondly, I want to help with Japanese learning. Since I haven’t experienced long-term studying abroad yet, I feel it is difficult to study a second language and I experienced many setbacks in my studying. So, I can understand students’ hard times or difficulties when studying a second language. I’ll do my best to try to understand each students’ difficulties in learning Japanese. My largest goal is growing students' interest in Japanese cultures and Japanese learning.

Sincerely,

From Kana