2024.09 - 2025.12
Japanese Research Club Vice President & Study Lead
Led beginner and advanced study groups in the university's Japanese Research Club and passed JLPT N1 about a year after beginning focused study.
What I did
I joined the university's Japanese Research Club in Fall 2024 to study Japanese seriously. After participating consistently in its beginner group, I became vice president in 2025 and began leading study sessions that spring.
For the beginner group, I designed an eight-week program that balanced visible progress with the enjoyment of using the language. The first four weeks covered foundational and derived kanji, vocabulary, formation principles, memory techniques, and problem solving. The next four used YouTube and anime scripts for repeated listening and guided conversation exercises.
In Fall 2025, I led an advanced group built around weekly JLPT past-paper practice and Q&A. Making myself responsible for preparing explanations every week also sustained my own study, and I passed the July 2025 JLPT N1 exam about a year after starting focused study.
Members also described how difficult it was to check whether their writing sounded natural and how cumbersome it was to record unfamiliar words in a separate tool. That observation later became the starting point for PolyLog's write → feedback → save → review loop.