Tips for English Speakers Learning Japanese

Now several years into his studies, Adam Porcher is enrolled as a computer science major at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor, NJ. Adam Porcher, who has lived in New Jersey and North Carolina, engages in a range of interests, including learning Japanese.

To learn Japanese, English speakers must learn three different character systems and different sentence structures. Here are a few tips to master this native language of over 128 million people.

Tie Your Learning to Real Life - While language classes can be helpful, it is important to practice Japanese in everyday situations to gain useful vocabulary and improve fluency. Learners can try to make recipes from a Japanese cookbook or read comic books written in Hiragana.

Find a Language Partner - Learners often focus more on reading and writing and have little practice listening and speaking. There are a number of free online language exchange groups where people can find a conversation partner.

Take Your Time - While grammar basics may not be the most interesting part of learning a new language, it is impossible to achieve fluency without having a strong foundation of basic language rules. Since there are very few grammar rules that apply to both languages, it is crucial for English speakers to learn basic Japanese sentence structures before moving on to more complex language concepts.

A Look at Ultimate Frisbee and Its Rules

Adam Porcher currently studies computer science at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey (NJ), where he has also participated in theater productions that include Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Outside of his academic pursuits, Adam Porcher also enjoys outdoor activities that include hiking, swimming, and ultimate Frisbee.

A non-contact sport, ultimate Frisbee features two teams of seven players that attempt to move the Frisbee down a rectangular field and score goals. Goals are scored by passing the Frisbee to a teammate in the opposing team’s endzone. 

Each ultimate Frisbee team must also abide by a number of rules. Players are not allowed to run with the Frisbee. Instead, they can only move it by completing passes to teammates. Moreover, the player with the Frisbee only has ten seconds to make a pass, or the possession switches to the opposing team. Ultimate Frisbee is also a non-contact sport, and sportsmanship and fair play is expected. Any contact with an opposing player results in a foul, which is called by the players themselves.

A Brief Overview of Video Game Design

A student at Mercer County Community College in NJ, Adam Porcher enjoys a wide variety of hobbies that include writing poetry, playing musical instruments, and studying Japanese culture. Currently a computer science undergraduate, New Jersey-based Adam Porcher also enjoys learning about game design.

Game design is an expansive field, one that involves creative writing, graphic design, and computer programming. The designers begin with a concept, asking who the target audience is and how much the project will cost.

The concept is then executed by a development team which, depending on the size of the project, may consist of roles like level designers, scriptwriters, and content artists. As soon as the collective output of the team members is assembled in a designated software platform, computer programmers then generate the necessary commands to allow players to interact with these elements. A video game, of course, will have to go through numerous beta versions before it's ready to be released in the market.

How Language Shapes the Way We Think

The ideas brought up in this Ted talk are very interesting and bring about many questions about variance in perspective. One's culture greatly affects their experience of life and perspective of various events. If referring to directions as cardinal directions rather than left or right can give humans the navigational skills thought to only exist in birds and other animals, how do smaller variances in language affect one's capabilities and life experience. Is the world constructed by speaking English in an Australian dialect different from that of an American dialect. What else might one be capable of should their language permit it?

How Does Computer Science Benefit Society?

A creative individual, New Jersey’s Adam Porcher participated in two theater productions in college and enjoys playing music. Adam Porcher is working toward his degree in computer science at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor, NJ. 

Computers have become a standard part of daily life. As such, computer science professionals play a huge role in improving society’s communication and access to information. These professionals are responsible for creating the tools needed for staying connected as a society, including emails, Facebook messages, and Twitter.

Beyond improving communication between friends and family, these tools disseminate information to society at a much faster pace. Rather than waiting for a newspaper, people receive updates about local, national, and international occurrences nearly instantaneously.

Computer science also benefits society by developing new methods of protection for people and organizations. Knowing that personal information is protected, society can continue using computers and phones with peace of mind.

Finally, computer science improves education. Students are capable of sharing work with their peers online or submitting a completed paper to their professor through email. Meanwhile, underserved communities have improved access to high-quality education through their phones and computers.

Tips for Writing Song Lyrics

At Mercer County Community College in New Jersey, Adam Porcher studies computer science. Adam Porcher also pursues musical and creative interests, which include writing song lyrics.

The process of writing song lyrics equates to capturing a moment of life simply, yet deeply. It requires the songwriter to trust his or her music and the capacity of that music to create emotion, to which the words then lend nuance and detail.

Many songwriters enjoy letting the music inspire the words, while others find that their words arise already attached to music. Either way, the songwriter must take care not to be overly flowery but rather to let the richness of the experience come through in the language.

Creating vivid language without excess verbiage can be challenging, so experts recommend taking some time to write descriptive paragraphs before turning to lyrics. One of the most effective techniques is to journal about a snapshot moment using language involving the senses, so that the songwriter can learn what the moment means and then make it come alive.

When the songwriter does begin to write in lines of lyric, rhyme can become a new challenge. It is important to remember that not all songs need to rhyme, and that lyrics without rhyme or with imperfect rhyme can sound even more conversational, spontaneous, and natural. The most important thing is to create words and phrases that flow smoothly, and that place clear images in the listener's mind.

Understanding Ultimate Frisbee’s Spirit of the Game Philosophy

Adam Porcher is a computer science student at Mercer County Community College and member of its Academic Theatre Company. When he isn't studying or performing in theatre productions, Adam Porcher enjoys playing Ultimate Frisbee.

The World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) is the governing body of Ultimate Frisbee as well as other similar sports such as disc golf and discathlon. As such, the WFDF sets the official rules of the sport and approves or denies any proposed changes. One of the unique aspects of the sport is that it doesn’t use a referee to enforce its rules; instead, it operates under the Spirit of the Game philosophy in which players are responsible for upholding the rules of the game and conducting fair play practices. The philosophy is used not only in a recreational setting, but also at the highest level of competition.

The philosophy was adopted during the earliest Ultimate Frisbee games and maintained a core element of the sport as it grew in popularity. Players are encouraged to treat their opponents as they would a close friend and trust that they would do the same. In regard to playing the game within the rules, players on both teams are expected to make fair and honest calls.