I’m currently a grade 10 student, and I’m applying for an exchange program to Japan next year and i’ve been accepted by my home country for the exchange, and am now working to get accepted by the Japanese side of the process.
In the application it’s stated that you have to have at least 1 year of Japanese experience, which I have since i’ve been doing classes through my school since the start of this school year, but they are now requesting that I do an all Japanese interview sometime later this month.
I’m really worried about this because even though I do have one year worth of experience, I highly doubt i’ll be able to succeed at an all Japanese interview with my current level.
Does anyone have any advice on how I can some-what prepare last minute for the interview? Obviously I wont be able to teach myself perfect Japanese in a couple weeks, but I would like to practice extra outside of my class, but it doesn’t need to be stuff for the long term.
I’m aready fairly confident in my verbal understanding, but i struggle with finding the right words when talking, so I definitely need to learn more vocabulary. I have basic grammar down from my classes so I think i’m fairly ok in that right as well.
Any resources or advice would be incredibly useful! The Japanese interview would only be about 10-15 minutes long, so nothing too crazy, but I would love to relieve some of the stress surrounding it by at least improving a little.
Thank you!
UPDATE: I just finished the interview a couple minutes ago and i think everything went fine..? they just asked for a self introduction which i had practiced for, and then some harder questions that they said in english as well as japanese so I never had an issue understanding what they were asking me (for the most part… haha) and said it was even ok if I felt I needed the answer in english. It was very scary though, there were about 5 or 6 people in the call and they all asked me different questions. But, at the end, they said to enjoy my trip in japan so i assume everything went alright! thank you again for your advice 🙂 although, up until the moment I get an email saying im accepted 100%, I will definitely still stress about it. lol.
6 comments
If you’re still taking Japanese language class in school now, I’d recommend asking the teacher if they’d consider giving some time to prepare you for this upcoming interview. Maybe develop a few questions that might be asked, and dome extra work for you to complete that could assist you in passing the interview.
if the interview is only 10-15 minutes long, then I’d say it’s more to assess whether or not you have any verbal skills at all and what your overall communication skills are like.
I would focus on being able to introduce yourself clearly (name, age/grade, your school, where you live, your family, your hobbies). most likely they will prompt you, so you don’t have to memorize a huge paragraph and infodump it on them. I’d also imagine they’ll ask why you applied for such a program, and what you’re looking forward to doing, places you want to see, etc.
your interviewers are aware you’re a student with one year of study. they have an idea of what kind of level of fluency to expect, and they will understand if you’re nervous. as long as you don’t completely blank for the entire 15 minutes, you’ll be fine with a little practice!
Talk to your Japanese teacher about what you should be preparing for. Given that you’ve only been studying for a year, I imagine these will mostly be soft ball questions aimed at assessing your Japanese ability and communication skills rather than hard hitting interview questions (those will be asked in English). If I was an interviewer I’d probably ask you things like:
What’s your hobby?
Do you like sports?
What subject do you like?
Do you have any pets?
My advice to you would be to obviously do your best to answer the questions in Japanese, but if you get stuck, don’t give up. Ask the interviewers to repeat themselves. If you can’t remember a word, use a gesture. They likely not only want to see how much Japanese you know, but more importantly they want to see how you handle challenges and language barriers. They want someone who’s not afraid to make mistakes and who is a good communicator, not necessarily someone who speaks perfect Japanese.
But check with your teacher to get a better sense for what they’re looking for. Even if your teacher doesn’t know, they’ll likely be better positioned to contact the exchange organization for more information
Listen to as many interviews as possible done by native or (near) fluent speakers. You can find a bunch of interviews on Youtube if you search around (you can just try searching for インタビュー) and maybe other keywords to key narrow things down (学校, etc.)
Here is an example of a random video that might help you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzcfxRLQ6sQ
You can also try podcasts, which can be interview-like. Manga Sensei podcast also has a bunch of interviews, partially in Japanese.
If they only want one year they are not going to expect anything above about N5. Maybe a little N4. I expect, like others have said, they basically want to make sure you can hold basic conversations in Japanese: my name is…, I like…., I did this and that on the weekend, etc.
Most likely they just want an understanding of your comprehension, so they know what support will be needed.
Break a leg! Practice, don’t stress (if you can), and get some conversation time in. I’m sure you’ll go great.
My guess is, a lot of the interview questions are going to be the kinds of things you’d do in a 自己紹介(じこしょうかい- self introduction).
So, they’ll probably ask where you’re from, what are your hobbies… why do you want to come to Japan, what age you are, what subjects you like, etc. If you can answer those in Japanese- and also understand those kinds of questions in Japanese- you should be fine.