v1hypersg said:
hi, which course are you in ?
elementary ?
wanted to join the elementary for the normal course which is 1 year but i will miss 4 lessons and have reservist in feb and march, will miss more lessons, so decided to sign up for the intensive elementary course in june, and in the meantime, will try to be very disciplined to memorise my hiragana and katakana so that i can improve faster till the JCS course start
by the way, does anyone know how much are the courses at JCS and is it true that if you miss a lesson, there is no make up ?
i'm in advanced classes now.
for JCS courses, there is a price increase as you move up the levels and you can split the payment and pay part of the school fees first. or you can pay the whole year's school fees in full through your one time registration. but i would suggest you to split up the school fees because if you feel like quitting, at least you will just lost that 3 month's school fees. its not an offence to you or anything, it is just that throughout my schooling years in JCS, i have seen the classes emptying out by more than half by the end of the year.
Since its your first time there, you have to pay for the registration fee, textbook and school fees. i think it is around 200 to 250 (sorry can't remember the price). but the subsequent 2 payments are less than 200 for the first year. so all in all, you will pay less than 600 for the first year.
make-up lessons are possible, provided you write a letter to the principal early, stating your reason of absence for the particular date and would like to make up at another class. There are even make-up exams, meaning that if you can't make it on the allocated exam time slot given to you, you can write a letter to request for a change of examination date / time.
JCS enforces strict discipline. if you are absent for 3 lessons (written on a piece of paper given to you on your first lesson) without a valid reason, you are barred from taking classes/exam. but there's a loophole involved. so if you are absent, you can write a letter explaining your reason of absence, and they will treat it as you taking "leave". but its better not to do that so often, otherwise you won't be able to catch up.
JCS elementary classes are rather simple. for the first few weeks you will learn hiragana (you will only learn katakana in the next level) and the teachers undstand that students don't exactly revise, so they will do a mini revision first, before continuing with lessons.
most students would find it easy for the first few weeks, and stayed in that stage. but as weeks progress on, lessons become harder and people find it difficult to catch up (based on students doing NO or LITTLE revision each week) as they have gotten used to the easy stage. Japanese is hard because the grammar, sentence structure is different from english and chinese. Most Japanese words changes forms when dealing with expressions and their particles and action words are different from the languages we learn here. for example, there are 15 different Japanese form changes while there are only 4 form changes in English.
well when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Patience and hard work are just some of the key factors to studying Japanese.