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.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 