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 2nd 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 1st 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 2nd 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 2nd 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 2nd 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.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 