Eigo wa chotto muzukashii da yo...*

My final midterm is in the form of a take-home essay. It's for my favorite international politics course that I always talk about -- I don't think I've discussed any of my other courses to the extent that I have with Anno's class. Anyway, Anno posted the essay questions on Moodle (the Japanese version of Blackboard) along with a tip sheet for writing essays.

This tip sheet, though I have only skimmed through it, is like a window into Japanese academic culture and language problems.

The opening sentence is, "Many of your sempai who took this course in the past (natives as well as non-natives) have had difficulty writing good English."

The "writing good English" part is universal. I know people at Creighton who can't write a decent essay to save their lives, and I'm sure it's much harder to write an essay in a second language (Aside: I think "...have had difficulty writing English well" sounds better? It sounds awkward as it is. Whatever). It also implies my English skillz, as in I haven't gotten a paper back with less than a B+ in two years, will secure me a good grade. At least better than those three guys I drew a few posts back.

The sempai-kouhai relationship is unique in Japanese culture. The sempai is like a big brother or big sister -- they help their kouhai in whatever way they can to make sure they succeed. In exchange, the kouhai is like the sempai's slave. Anyway, this sentence leads me to believe that everyone and their mom has some sort of sempai-kouhai relationship. Everyone's got someone looking out for them or is taking care of someone in this university setting. The natives and non-natives part confuses me a little. Does that mean gaijin and nihonjin can mix together? I wasn't aware I was allowed to have a nihonjin sempai or take on a nihonjin kouhai, it seems kind of weird.

Anno goes on about different grammatical structures that he finds students have problems with, like the use of apostrophes in certain words. Native English speakers wouldn't have trouble on most of the things he mentions, but the apostrophe thing is one of the most irritating grammatical mistakes I see from native English speakers. "It's", "its'", and "its" are all SUCH SMALL STUPID MISTAKES that soooooo many people I know make all the time. I'm sure someone can find an example of it in my own writing, possibly on this blog, but I do know better.

If I find any other gems worth mentioning I'll edit this post. For now, I'm going to go do Japanese homework.

EDIT: All this talk of grammar has me wondering about Japanese grammar. The girl to the left of me is writing something in Word in Japanese, but in the traditional up-down style. Most natives in the computer lab write their Japanese essays and whatnot in the Western style of left-right, like the girl to my right. And I'm just a crazy gaijin in the middle typing a blog in English.

*The title is supposed to translate as, "English is kind of difficult..."