月: 2020年4月

Date: April 24th on Friday, 2020 from 13:40 to 15:10 (14:40 – 16:10 in JST)

Course: Japanese Conversation 4

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 82 slides

Numbers of Students: 24 out of 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 15,    Completely Absent : 4,

Shorter signing-in: 86, 72, 52, 24*2, 18, 10, 5minutes, and the shortest was 5 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25. One of these students was actually recorded as completely absent.

– 1st Quiz: 19 students responded. The quiz was just to ask the right conjugation of 3rd group verb “Kuru/Kimsu” in Nai-form.

– 2nd Quiz:17 students responded. The question was to choose one sentence that was different from other three sentences. The four were all using “If” type conjunctive particles “-to”, “-ba”, “-tara”, and “-nara”. Of these, only the sentence with “-nara” had different construction that was simply “Noun+nara”.

3rd Only one student responded, no one got the right answer.  In fact the question was too difficult for the students. It was to choose one erroneous sentence among four that were using “If” type conjunctive particles.

– Attendance check at the end: 21 students responded. It is to find a sentence that was erroneously using “-nara” because its conditional clause was too definitely determined to be an assumption.

Teaching: 

– Listening to a conversation between two part time job workers.

– Review and exercise of conditional conjunctive particle “-ba,”

– Introduction of another conditional conjunctive particle “-nara,”,

– Exercise of “-ba” and “-nara”

Homework Assignment:

Any homework was assigned in this time. There was no time to check and evaluate a homework because many classes were scheduled in short period of time before the spring holidays from May 1 to 5th.

Issues and Problems:

The purpose of quiz during class is to check whether or not each student is really listening to the online class. It seems that I might have asked too much difficult questions for the purpose these days. Today’s quiz No.3 was so difficult that no student could get the answer. It is necessary to make those questions appropriate for level of students’ understanding.

Date: April 20th on Monday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Conversation 4

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 81 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 20,    Completely Absent : 3,

Shorter signing-in: 71, 41, 31, 19, 7 minutes.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25. One out of 25 was recorded as completely absent. One student did not report the attendance by him?herself but was recorded with 41 minutes attendance. Probably the student came late and left early.

– 1st Questionnaire: 19 students responded. This was not a question but a questionnaire. The students were asked to answer which of the four summer festivals in Japan they want to come and see. The festivals were Nebuta in Aomori, Tanabara in Sendai, Bon-Odori in anywhere, and Fireworks in everywhere. Most of the students prefer fireworks.

– 2nd Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was to find a different type of conjunctive particle out of five sentences. Four sentences used “If” type conjunctive particles and only one sentence used “Even-if” type conjunctive particle. The students were asked to find “Even-if” type. All the 17 answers were correct.

– 3rd Quiz: 20 students responded. The quiz was to ask right connections between negative “-nai” and conditional conjunctive particle “-ba”. All the answers were correct.

Attendance check at the end: 20 students responded. This is a quiz to ask the right conjugation of verb ‘iku/ikimasu” for conditional form.

Teaching: 

– Listening to conversation between part time job workers.

– Review on hearsay expressions using “-souda”, “-rashii”. “He/she says”, and “It is said that”

– Feedback about a Test result; A small test was given to students on April 13. The result was explained to the students for further understanding about differences between hearsay and guessing

– Introduction of the conditional conjunctive particle “-ba” and verb conjugations for conditional form

Homework Assignment:  Students were asked to type verb conjugations to conditional forms.There were 30 verbs but 60 answers were required. 30 were conditional forms directly obtained from dictionary forms. 30 were also conditional forms but obtained from potential forms.

Issues and Problems:

I am not sure whether it is standardized teaching or not as to conditional forms that are obtained from potential forms. It might bring a severe confusion to students because it makes students think as if 5-dan conjugation verb were also conjugated to have -reba. Reba ending is only for 1-dan conjugation verbs, Kuru, and Suru (actually Ra-row 5-dan verbs, too). What I thought was simple. It is useful to know conditional forms coming from potential forms because Japanese use very often that kind of conditional forms in conversation.

Date: April 17th on Friday, 2020 from 13:40 to 15:10 (14:40 – 16:10 in JST)

Course: Japanese Conversation 4

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 63 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 16,    Completely Absent : 5,

Shorter signing-in: 82, 52, 42, 41, 31, 5minutes, and the shortest was 56 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 22.

– 1st Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was to talk about several usages of particle “-to”. Selections are as follows: (A) “-to” for Noun1 and Noun2, (B) “-to” for someone whom you do something together with, (C) “-to” for comparison and/or classification, (D) “-to” follows what he/she thought and/or said, and conjunctive particle “-to” for conditioning. This quiz was to make the students choose D.

– 2nd Quiz: 16 students responded. The quiz was not a question but a kind of questionnaire. Students were asked to choose a hearsay from three choices. This was a kind of tips on business.

– 3rd Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was to distinguish hearsay or guessing. Probably it was a little grammatical to ask the students at this time. Only two students got correct answers.

– Attendance check at the end: 20 students responded. A correct verb conjugation to fit hearsay “-souda” was asked.

Teaching: 

– Review of conversation using the auxiliary verb “-souda” for hearsay.

– Introduction of the expression “-to itte iru” for “he/she says that -”

– Introduction of the expression “-to iwarete iru” for “it is said that -”

– Introduction of the expression “-ni mieru” for “it seems that – ”

Homework Assignment:

No document need to be submitted this time. The students were asked (1) to do self-check of the small test that was a homework of last class, and (2) to listen to a mp3 that was a conversation between two part time job workers with one being new to the job.

Issues and Problems:

Today’s new expressions were “he/she said that”, “it is said that”, and “it seems that” (in Japanese!). It seems that they can be alternatives for auxiliary verbs “-youda” and “-souda”. In a strict sense, I don’t think they are identical to “youda” and “souda” in the meaning and functions. But in order for the students to do conversation without stopping it, I would like to recommend using those a little bit lengthy but easy and clear  expressions. If you use “youda” and /or “souda”, a difference of just a one letter or two changes the meaning of whole sentence; guessing or hearsay.