Japanese

日本語

Welcome to the Boulder High School Japanese program!

• Japanese is a strong and growing program. Currently, students can take Japanese 1 through Japanese Advanced Placement. There are approximately 140 students enrolled in Japanese.

• Students are well-prepared. Most students who go on to study Japanese at the college level do very well. In addition, Boulder High School routinely wins a least one level in the regional competition of the Japan Bowl, which is a tournament that tests students knowledge of Japanese language and culture.

• Mike Kleinkopf, the teacher, holds a doctorate in Japanese literature, and has been teaching for eleven years. He received an excellence in teaching award from the University of Northern Colorado for the 2005-2006 school year.

• While it is true that the Japanese writing system is challenging, other aspects of the language are no more difficult to learn than the other languages offered at Boulder High School. In fact, many students are happy to learn that Japanese has only two "tenses" (past and non-past), and that there are no articles, no cases, and no irregular verbs (at least in the masu form learned in Japanese 1). Japanese is structurally very different, not necessarily more difficult, than Romance and Germanic languages, and so it is interesting and exciting to learn!

For inquiries about the Japanese program, please contact Mike Kleinkopf at michael.kleinkopf@bvsd.org.