High School Japanese II

Students will be expected to understand and speak Japanese at basic conversational level upon entering this level 2 class. This course assumes students can read Hiragana and Katakana, know some Kanji, and are  familiar with about half the Japanese grammar that a student would have mastered in a first-year university course.  The course is built upon the excellent textbook series called Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese.  The student coming into the course at level 2 would be able to do all of the material in the first volume of the Genki textbook series.  A portion of the level 2 class, usually the first half, will be conducted solely in Japanese. Each class is recorded, and students can go back and listen to the class on the CLRC website. This is an excellent way for students to build listening skills.

"I have been taking Japanese class with Dr Todd Godwin for 2 years. The lessons are challenging and never dull. Godwin Sensei uses a wide variety of tools and resources to help his students master the language. Being under his care allowed me to work as a junior counselor at the Japanese-American friendship camp in Boston, MA this summer. It would not have been possible without Sensei! I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity to learn Japanese! " — Kristen F., New Hampshire

Fall '21 - Spring '22 Registration is Open!

Todd  has been interested in foreign languages, cultures, and history since high school (which was quite some time ago now). He has lived and traveled extensively in East Asia and the Middle East, and was for some years a language teacher there. He has more recently combined his interest in Chinese language and history with his interest in Greco-Roman and early Christian history by writing a PhD thesis on the earliest Christian texts written in the Chinese language (from the seventh and eighth centuries).

In addition to PhD obtained from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, he has a BA in Philosophy and World Religions from the University of Tennessee, an MA in Early Christian History from Miami Ohio, and MA in Language Teaching and Linguistics from Georgia State University, Atlanta. He now lives in Tennessee with his wife Kaori, and their daughter Aurelia, whom they are raising to be bilingual (English and Japanese).