Japanese Language Club with Maka

Maka. Photo by Jin Yup Jung '14. Copyright Red Cloud Indian School.

Japanese Language Club with Maka

By Jin Yup Jung '14

“KONICHIWA!” 

“SUGOI!” 

With the eagerness to learn a foreign language, the conversation between students and a teacher keep coming and going at Maka Clifford’s Japanese language club on every Tuesday and Thursday after school. The Japanese club is available for all students who belong to Red Cloud High School. 

They have mastered self-introduction and how to express likes and dislikes. The club is led by Maka, who graduated from Red Cloud High School in 2005 and went to Columbia University, which is the one of Ivy League colleges. He studied all four years in the college and lived a year and half in Japan.

It’s been a wonderful experience so far for Maka to come back to Red Cloud as a teacher. The reasons he came back to RCHS are that he recalled the belief in Red Cloud mission and he wanted to give back to his community.

Basically, he loves to teach Japanese language in the after-school program. “When I studied Japanese, it opened a whole new world for me,” Maka said. "I want to give students the same opportunities to expand their minds."

Originally, there were some differences between Japanese grammar and English grammar. One of the difference is that English is subject-verb-object, whereas Japanese grammar is subject-object-verb (same as Lakota grammar). So far, they’ve learned basic grammar and vocabulary, and they’ve mastered self-introductions and how to express likes and dislikes, along with simple language skills. 

“For me my goal is to expose students to another culture,” Maka said. “I think students can gain knowledge of the world.”