月: 2019年11月

Monday;

I just wanted to take a shower in the morning, and all of a sudden I got a blackout. Tap water also stopped. So I brushed my teeth with drinking water from bottle. I was lucky because I had already taken my breakfast before the blackout. At eight in the morning was my small Japanese class. I usually don’t use PPT for this class. So I could do my class without electricity. I went back my residence before ten. There was a task that I did not need any electricity. That was evaluation and correction of compositions of Friday class. Electricity came back around noon. After the lunch I turned my computer on and proofread a draft of monthly newsletter of Japanese. It took two hours to correct the third draft of a student. I sent it by email and started making PPT for Wednesday and Thursday’s listening class. It took five hours. I cooked my supper at eight and went to bed at 10 p.m.

Tuesday;

My small class is basically for reading. Six students are not of Japanese department. They passed the university’s entrance examination by taking Japanese test for foreign language test. The course “University Japanese” is a required subject for them. A textbook is designated by the university. But I found that textbook was so boring, I decided to use other teaching materials once in five classes. The problem is what to use for such supplementary teaching. I thought of two choices; one was to use more interesting reading material, and the other was to do communicative activities using a much easier textbook. My dilemma was that I wanted to improve their communication skills of Japanese, but it was not likely for them to have a chance to use Japanese for communication in real situation. Probably it would be wise to concentrate on reading without wasting time for communication skills. So I used a different reading material that was more interesting than designated textbook last time. However, I had got other problems. The level of that article was still higher for some of six students. Therefore, I changed from reading to communicative activities using easier textbook for the next day class on Wednesday,

I don’t have any class on Tuesday, so I can spend all my time to prepare for classes. I made PPT for communicative activities for that small class in the morning. It took two hours. And then I went to the teachers’ room at ten a.m. to print for quiz which was also for that small class. Once I came back from teacher’s room, I made PPT for listening class that I could not completed on Monday. It took 7 hours. That meant it took 12 hours in total to make PPT for 90 minutes class. I couldn’t make a minute-by-minute time scheduling for 90 minutes because I didn’t have time to practice. I worked two hours more to evaluate compositions of Friday class before going to bed.

Wednesday;

The deadline was on Thursday. I mean, the drafts of articles for the monthly newsletter had to be submitted by the following day. This month I was asked by four students to proofread their drafts. One of those students had overlooked my email for more than one week, and sent the second draft to me Tuesday night. I had to proofread it immediately. I started proofreading at 6 a.m. and sent it back at 7 a.m. And then taking a shower quickly, I went to class at 8 that was listening class. I spent the afternoon doing newsletter drafting by 2 p.m., took nap for an hour, and PPT making for composition class from 3 to 8p.m. I didn’t have enough time to finish it. At around 9 p.m. I sent an email to the last student to tell her completion of drafting. It was good to finish one day advanced to deadline. After that, two students gave me thank-you emails, but two students did not.

Thursday;

I tried to finish making PPT for composition class from 7 a.m. until noon. Although it was apparently short for 90 minutes, I gave up because I had to teach in listening class in early afternoon. Composition class was in early evening. The students should have noticed that I was ill-prepared because my teaching was so slow and PPT slides were just repetition that had already shown to them before. After coming back at 5:30, I prepared for my small class and evaluate compositions of Friday class by 8 p.m.

Friday;

I taught in small class in the morning. They are not good at speaking. So every time, I make them record my voice on their mobile phone while I am reading out a dialogue on the textbook. And then I make them speak that dialogue in the next class. This time I graded fluency of their dialogues. Back in my residence I evaluated the rest of Friday class compositions. I wanted to finish it by the class in the early evening, but I gave up finishing it. I could not return part of composition in the class. Instead, I added some slides to PPT that was used in Thursday class. They were slides to make student practice “Da-Dearu style” of writing. This worked in the class. Composition evaluation of the former week still continued. I spent three hours for it after the class. It was obvious that I spent many hours for Friday class composition. One of reasons was that I have to proofread newsletter draft last Saturday. Another reason was that everybody in Friday class submitted composition that was 28. On the other hand, only two third students of Thursday class submitted composition that was only 20. So simply, I have to evaluate more compositions for Friday class. I angry with Thursday class’s poor attendance. But it’s true that less composition helps me a little.

Saturday;

Saturday was, again, another working day. I spent a whole of morning hours to evaluate last week’s composition. I went to a grocery store as usual and found that vegetable’s prices had gone up much, although they were still cheaper than vegetables in Japan. Once I finished evaluation of last week’s composition, I started evaluation of this week’s composition. This time I made the students write a memo that could be a preparation for job interview. Since several weeks before, I told them to find a Japanese company that seemed to be attractive. And I told them to write two things last week; 1. Why a student chose the company, and 2. How the student can contribute to the company using his/her skills. Saturday afternoon was not enough to evaluate all of the students’ composition, but I checked some of them. I am sorry to say, but I am sure that a human resource personnel would not like to hire most of them. Because what they wrote was too simple without any concrete ideas. They didn’t check even what the company was doing. I’d say no one is going to hire them. I stopped working at 8, had a supper at 9, and then wrote part of this log. Although I went to bed at 10:30, I couldn’t fall asleep at 11p.m., 12a.m., 1a.m., and was still awaken at 2a.m.

Sunday;

Yes, it is today. I felt a headache in the morning. Especially the between eyes was so aching that I could not look at the computer screen. I didn’t start working in the morning. I took shower and went outside to cut my hair. Coming back from haircut, I wrote a long email and sent it around 11a.m. I tried to evaluate composition of this week in the afternoon, but I couldn’t do that. I took a nap. I got up from the bed at 5p.m. and then prepared for Monday’s small class. I cooked my supper and…, uh, this week’s logs have already been too long. Better to stop writing. What I need is just to take a rest.

There has been one thing that I don’t write clearly because I don’t think it is appropriate to write about it. Since my students visit this blog, I think it would be better not to write what it is.

Monday;

I taught in a small class in morning. They are not students in Japanese department. Many people are saying that a native Japanese teacher should teach students in Japanese department, not the other department’s students. So I will be removed from the position in coming 2^nd semester. I got this class by coincident or even as an accident. I like my six students, but I cannot continue to teach them. I feel very sad because it will be like abandoning them. Their Japanese proficiency is specifically only reading. They cannot do oral/aural communication well. So I wanted to improve their communication skill, but time is almost running out. After the class was just a working on a computer. It took eight hours before going to bed.

Tuesday;

I don’t have a class on Tuesday. Waking up at 6, I started PPT making for listening class at 7 a.m. I finished it by 11. I started another task for my small class. It took six hours. And then I started another PPT presentation at 6 p.m that was for composition class. I couldn’t finish it by the time I went to bed.

Wednesday:
I taught two classes in the morning; the first was listening class, and second was the small class. I have to say I was ill-prepared for the small class. I took lunch and went to the teacher’s office to print some documents. It took a whole of the afternoon from 1:00 to 5:30, but I could not finish even one third of the entire volume. I went back to my residence and continued to work to make PPT presentation  for composition class.

Thursday:

Composition class was in the afternoon, but I hadn’t completed making PPT when I woke up at 6. I started working at 7, and finished PPT making at noon. The first class in the afternoon was the listening class which is for 1^st grade students. I have two classes of it and I basically teach the same thing to two classes. This week I checked how well they can use Ko-So-Ado words. Interestingly, Thursday class students were almost perfect (actually Wednesday class not). Anyway I had a problem with the composition class in early evening. The number of PPT slides was apparently short for 90 minutes class. I tried to use time to make student say the differences of transitive verbs and intransitive verbs of Japanese. However, what I prepared couldn’t last until the end. I don’t know if it’s acceptable or not, I finished the class 5 minutes earlier.

Friday:

Two composition classes for 2^nd grade are on Thursday and Friday. They must be the same. But I had to add some PPT slides for Friday class because shortage was apparent in the class on the day before. I started making PPT slides at 7 in the morning and finished it at 9. That was about onomatopoeia of Japanese. I expected that it could last ten minutes. Anyway once I finished PPT thing, took shower, and went to the teacher’s room. I had to print a lot of documents by the deadline. I had already done one third of it on Wednesday, however, I hadn’t done for the rest two thirds. I carefully checked the document and made some corrections. I completed that task around 2 p.m. and went back my resident. I boiled water and cooked Udon noodle for my late lunch. And then at 3 p.m., I went to the composition class. Teaching onomatopoeia went well for covering up the shortages of slides, although onomatopoeia is not used so often in composition but very much in manga. Actually I got a little problem in the class, but I should not write about it right now for the privacy of a student. I hoped that the student would have a nice weekend.

Saturday;

Saturday was another working day. The Japanese department issues monthly newsletters. I had to check and correct students’ draft. This time I got draft from four students. I returned the first draft last Sunday. Since I got three 2^nd draft this week, so I spent almost all day to check and correct three drafts. I went outside at noon to have lunch in the university restaurant and then went to a grocery store. I bought vegetable for the week. It seemed that prices went up because of the season.

Sunday;

Every weekend I evaluate and correct students’ compositions from Thursday and Friday classes. I couldn’t do that on Saturday because of newsletter things, so I started it Sunday morning at 7. I ate lunch in the university restaurant and went to a supermarket to buy rice. It was 5kg. I continued evaluation of compositions and finished one class at 5p.m., and then prepared for my small class in Monday morning. I had to evaluate compositions of second class. Snowy outside, it has turned to be white.

I was really exhausted by hard working of these days. Although still one and a half months remain for this semester, I would like to improve my working style in the 2^nd semester.

I drew the picture below long time ago for introducing Te-form of verbs. I don’t like the studying guy in the picture, because it reminds me of what I was in my university days. Why are you studying hard in the very last day before the exam? You see now it is almost midnight. Why didn’t you start studying three days before? Why couldn’t you expect this might happen if you didn’t study hard? It is so terrible. I don’t want to remember the feeling of that kind.

Monday;

I taught a small class at 8 in the morning. Since I wanted to print some handouts, I went to the teachers’ room. As usual, I hadn’t met any teachers there. So I left there once I finished photocopying handouts. They were three Japanese poems that I wanted to use in composition class. It was for educational purpose in classroom. So I don’t think there would be a copyright issue. The rest of the day was spent for making PPT that was to be used in the listening classes of the 1^st grade.

Tuesday;

No class, but I worked all day. PPT makings were for listening classes of 1^st grade and for composition classes of 2^nd grade. I practiced the class teaching in the early evening with measuring time.

Wednesday;

There were two classes in morning. I was making PPT for composition classes in the rest of the day. I could not finish it.

Thursday;

I started making PPT at 6a.m. I could finish it at 8, and then I started editing audio data for listening course. There were two classes in the afternoon. When the first class was over, I forgot to take my USB thumb drive off from the computer. I got to know it when I started the second class. Since the classrooms are in the different buildings and it is a little bit far to take it back by myself, I asked two male students to go get my USB memory. I think it was better for them to spend several minutes outside because they don’t like the class.

Friday;

The morning class became even smaller. There were only four students. I asked them to do a debate by two by two. One pair like doing sport outside or gymnasium that is real sport, and another pair like doing video game that is not real sport. Their proficiency for utterance was still not good to make discussion. So debate was not going well. After the class, I edited audio data for listening and evaluated some students’ composition. I taught a composition class in the early evening. They still feel it difficult to distinguish transitive verbs and intransitive verbs of Japanese. I got back my residence and kept working by 10 p.m. for submitted homework compositions.

Saturday;

I evaluated compositions of two classes in the morning. It was a disappointment that one third of one class didn’t follow my direction. I thought it was not easy nor fun to the students to write a composition by reading short Tanka poems on the text book. So I prepared three nice poems that would made it easy to write their impression. We read three poems in the classroom and were moved by them. But one third of students ignored three poems and wrote their impressions to Tanka on the textbook. Actually those students are below average. Perhaps my communications skill was not good for them.

I went to a grocery store when I ate my lunch. I made proofreading and correction very much in detail for three students in the afternoon. When I stopped working, it was 9p.m.

Sunday;

I made teaching materials by my computer all day. It was like from 7a.m. to 10p.m. I went outside lunch time only.

I just recalled what one man said to me seven years ago. He said, “a guy’s life is like you worked and worked, then you realize that you are already in 60’s”.