"Multilingual Education" at the Affiliated Schools

I've been involved in music since I was young, and now I play the horn in the university's Wagner Society Orchestra. I was also in the Wagner Society when I was at the Girls Senior High School. Being involved in music, I often see scores by German and Austrian composers, and the instructions are written in German. I was thinking, "It would be great if I could understand what they mean myself." Around that time, a senior student who had studied German in the multilingual education program at the Girls Senior High School advised me, "The German classes are small, so you get many opportunities to speak, and it's fun." That's what inspired me to give it a try.

Like Yamataki-san, music was also my motivation. I still play percussion in a wind ensemble. At the Girls Senior High School, I was in the Mandolin Club, but I also play the piano. On piano sheet music, not only are the instructions in German, but sometimes the lyrics for choral pieces are as well. I thought that the quality of my performance would differ depending on whether I played while understanding the meaning or not. That's what motivated me to learn German.

Yes. At the Girls Senior High School, besides German, the options for a second foreign language are Chinese and French. While Chinese has similarities to Japanese, such as using kanji, German and French are languages you can't understand without studying from scratch. But I thought if I was going to do it, I wanted to feel like "it was worth it!" and also learn a language spoken in a country where English isn't widely understood. That's another reason I chose German.

There's a piece by Schumann called "Widmung," and the lyrics are written on the sheet music for this piece. Thanks to studying German, I could pick out the meaning of individual words, but I couldn't understand the meaning of the entire text because some of it was in older German. If I get the chance, I'd like to try playing it again after fully understanding the meaning myself.

I took the classes in my second and third years. In the second year, there was one weekly session of two consecutive class periods. In the third year, in addition to that, there was another single class period on a different day.

Just as my senior said, the class was small, so I was grateful for the atmosphere where I felt I could ask anything. The class focused on grammar, and I could ask questions immediately if there was something I didn't understand.

Our teacher, Ms. Okuyama, had lived in Germany during her childhood, and it was memorable how she taught us how to actually use grammar by sharing episodes from that time. Also, during events like Christmas, the teacher would bring German sweets like Stollen, which was fun.

In the third year, one class was taught by a native-speaking teacher, Francesca Ritto, and during that class, both Japanese and English were forbidden; it was a German-only class. We had to do our best to understand what Ms. Ritto said in German and respond in German.

In other classes, you might end up explaining things in Japanese, but that wasn't allowed in this class. So, even if we didn't know every word, we tried to understand the content, and the teacher also tried to understand what we wanted to say. There was this earnest connection, which naturally brought out our motivation, and I started to think that speaking German is fun and that I wanted to speak more. It was challenging, but having a class with a native teacher was a big deal for me.

We students planned a Christmas party and played games. We played games using German, like rearranging words.

It was a lot of fun.

With English, I felt more like I was made to learn it rather than learning it on my own initiative. But German was a language I wanted to learn, so I felt a great sense of accomplishment. After learning all the grammar, I was so happy when I could vaguely understand what was being said. There are also many expressions that are different from English, and I came to understand the differences in culture and ways of thinking behind the languages. It made me feel really glad that I studied a multilingual program.

What I found interesting was that in German, the grammar is flexible, and any word can come at the beginning of a sentence. For example, in English, it's rare for the object to come before the subject, except in special cases. But in German, because the articles and verb conjugations indicate who is speaking, it's interesting that the meaning is understood even if the word order is changed.

What made me glad I studied German at the Girls Senior High School was that I was able to take classes taught with lively, real-world German. I could learn grammar at the university, but Ms. Okuyama's classes were based on her actual experiences and included local trivia, which made them easy to understand and memorable.

Also, the classes and tests with the native teacher, Ms. Ritto, emphasized conversation, and we had many opportunities to actually speak with her. This is also something that's hard to do at the university.

Yes. For example, in the English subjunctive mood, we say things like "If I were..." but honestly, I didn't understand why we use "were." But when I heard that it's based on German grammar, it made sense.

When you encounter English after learning German, you make new discoveries. English and German are similar in some ways, and concepts like relative pronouns are very similar in their basic idea. By learning German, I came to understand English grammar more deeply as well.

Compared to those who haven't studied it before, I think I have less of a negative feeling toward a second foreign language. However, during test periods at the Girls Senior High School, I inevitably prioritized subjects related to university entrance, and honestly, there was some grammar I had started to forget. But now, by learning it again at the university, I can firmly fix the grammar in my mind. Also, by understanding it based on the university professor's teaching method, I can learn the same grammar from a different perspective. It feels like I'm learning a "more practical German."

The professor teaching me at the university now is someone who has truly engaged with "German as a language" and puts a lot of thought into "how to teach German to us." Because of that, he teaches the grammar in great detail, so it's a strange feeling, as if I'm now organizing and relearning the German I studied so hard for two years in high school. It's like connecting the "dots" I learned back then into a "line" now. I feel like I'm mapping out the whole picture.

Regarding the piece "Widmung" I mentioned earlier, there's a part in the musical notation that says "gradually get louder and play loudest here." When I deciphered the German instruction written there, it indicated that the chord for "you (Du)," as in "it is you I am thinking of" in the lyrics, should be played the strongest. By being conscious of that, I was able to perform with a strong feeling of "I dedicate this to you," just as the title "Widmung" (Dedication) suggests.

Also, when looking at sheet music, there are inevitably musical symbols I don't know, and I have to look them up. By chance, near one such symbol, the word "langsam" was written, which corresponds to the English "slow." Because I had studied German, I understood what it meant without having to look it up.

When I was playing a piece by Wagner, the instruction "gewichtig" was written in the score. The dictionary only says "heavy," but it's a derivative of "wichtig," which means "important" in English. Understanding that, I could grasp the nuance that "this part should be played with significance." It was a moment when I was glad I had studied German.

Also, after entering university, I had the opportunity to be conducted by a professor living in Germany, and he would give instructions in German. It's fun to be able to understand what he's saying.

I haven't had many opportunities to see operas yet, but I'd like to. I want to try watching one in the German version as well.

My immediate goal is the Wagner Society's performance tour to Europe in my fourth year. We'll be going to Germany, so I'd like to try speaking with the local people in German.

From February to March of this year (2025), I will be studying abroad for a short term at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, and I'm looking forward to communicating with the local people there in German. I want to see how well my German works in a practical setting.

I also heard there will be opportunities to interact with people there who are learning Japanese, so I'm eager to see how they see us and to learn about the perspectives and culture that the local people can teach me, and to build connections.