日: 2020年5月9日

Took a Walk in the Afternoon. Late Spring in Niigata, JAPAN.

It was 4:10 in the afternoon when I finished the online Japanese teaching. I had two online classes yesterday. Since I prepared for them almost through the night, I just wanted to go outside. The sky was clear yesterday, although it had become not so clear when I started walking in late afternoon.

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Wisteria flowers were in full bloom in the play ground of nearby junior high school. I think the tree is very old because I think it has been there since I was a kid.

 

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A view from the bank that is just behind the junior high school. There is a small ship building factory there. Community paper said that some American people came to the ship builder there to make an old style wooden boat, if my memory was correct.

I think there were many boats that went up and down the rivers in Niigata Plain (Echigo Plain) in the past like 19th century. Of course those navigation are now very rare. But what I thought was that if I devoted to a research about the history of water transportation in Niigata Plain, what would it be like? For example, writing a dissertation about it.  Uh.., it would be just a micro history in a small rural community. No one would be interested in such a tiny issue. I think I will not do a such research, probably.

 

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Snow is melting on the Iide Mountains that is located among Niigata, Fukushima and Yamagata Prefectures.

 

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I should have paid attention to the utility pole when I took this photo.

 

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I was walking on a bridge that was almost the same age as me. The peak of the mountain in the photo is 1,293 meter if my memory is correct.

 

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I don’t know this mountain’s altitude exactly. Probably it may be 1500 meter. Its cliff looks like an inside of split bowl. It was said that the cliff was the mouth of the volcano in the very old time, but I am not sure.

 

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So the paddy fields are now filled with water. It seems that the rice seedlings have already been planted there.

 

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This was the last photo I took yesterday.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on May 8, 2020

Date: May 8th 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 59 slides

Numbers of Students: 26 out of 28, Number of completely absent was 2

Fully attendant for 90min : 16

Shorter signing-in: 86, 82, 63, 37, 24, 16, 16, 6, 4 minutes, and the shortest was 2 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 24. Two students came late.

– 1st Quiz: 19 students responded. The quiz was to find a sentence using the conditional conjunctive particle “-to” from four sentences.

– 2nd Quiz: 21 students responded. The question was to check the students’ understanding for limitation of use of the conditional conjunctive particle “-to”.

– 3rd Quiz: 23 students responded. The question was to make a student complete a conversation by filling the blanks correctly with understanding the difference between “-temo” and “-to”.

– Attendance check at the end: 19 students responded. Like the quiz No.3, this was also to ask proper uses of conditional conjunctive particles “-temo” and “-to”.

Teaching: 

– Conditional conjunctive particle “-to”, especially for  its limitation for the latter clause. Expressions like intention, invitation, and/or command are not used in the latter clause when the preceding clause uses “-to,”.

– Introduction of another conditional conjunctive particle “-tara,” including comparison with other conditional conjunctive particles “-to,”, “-ba,”, and “-nara,”.

Homework Assignment:

– Nothing to submit to the teacher this time. The students were asked to evaluate a short test for the section 12 by him/herself.

– Six students were asked to send a voice mail by speaking the script of conversation of two part time job workers.

Issues and Problems:

A lot of rote exercise (mechanical trainings) for sentences with “-to” and “-tara”. The students must have been tired and fed up with.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on May 8, 2020

Date: May 8th on Friday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Basic Composition 2

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 79 slides

Numbers of Students: 24 out of 28

90 minutes attendance: 14 students

Shorter attendances: 87, 86, 84, 69, 58, 51, 14, 5, 4, and 3 minutes.

completely absent: 4 students

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check: 24. But, of these, one student was recorded as “Completely Absent” on the system. One student came late.

Quiz 1 : 23 students responded. The question was to find an error on use of particle. Not “-ga” but “-o” must be used for the object of an intransitive verb.

Only the quiz No.1 was done using BBS during the class. Instead, five questions were given to the students. And they were asked to send five answers immediately after the class.

Teaching:

– Feedback about the homework assignment which was to write an essay about an episode of a health care worker from abroad.

– Review of the first half of this semester. Five questions were given to the students in order to check their understanding for the issues that were already explained in the classes so far.

Homework:

– HW is suspended until I evaluate and send back the first drafts that were expressions about reading health care workers from abroad.

Issues and Problems:

<No time to write them right now>