月: 2020年5月

Date: May 13th on Wednesday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Listening 2

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 66 slides

Numbers of Students: 27

Every student stayed with me from the start to the end.

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : All of the 27 students typed his/her attendance on BBS.

– Quiz 1 : 26 students answered.The question asked the relation between “Naze” in the question and “-karadesu” in the answer which seems to have similarity with English’s “Why?- Because”.

– Quiz 2: 26 students answered.The question was to distinguish the function of a noun “tokoro” that can mean just before, ongoing, and right after

– Quiz 3: 26 students answered. Question was about a noun “koto”. The students were asked to choose one sentence from four, in which “koto” meant a decision by the one’s will.

– Quiz at the End: 26 students typed their own sentences that meant like “A person can d osomething”(of course in Japanese) .

Teaching:

1: Basics of Japanese grammar

– Intransitive verb predicate sentences and particles used in such sentences.

– Wa-ga construction for existence focusing on relations between the topic “wa” that contains and the subject “ga ” that is contained; in other words, “wa” for the entire and “ga” for a part. The students not only over-generalize “Wa-ga construction”, but also reversely place the entire thing and a part in the wa-ga construction. Also a caution was given to the students. the subject is unclear in a “Wa-ga construction” because it has the topic and the subject. It is better to use another construction that has a clear subject in order to make a sentence to say an existence of a thing and matter.

2: Review of grammar in the last class

– The section 18 of the textbook that contains some expressions using “V-te iru”.

3: Introduction to the section 19 of the textbook

– Functional nouns like koto, tsumori, and tokoro. Especially the expressions for capabilities were explained for both two types. One was that a person has potentiality to do something and the other was that the situation allows someone to do something.

– Exercise1 and 2 of the section 19 in the textbook.

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

– I used many PPT slides to make the students understand that there is a relationship of “contains – contained” in Wa-ga construction. “Contains” uses “-wa” as the topic and “Contained” uses “-ga” as the subject. But some students often place those words in reverse. It seems that, rather than teaching the same thing over and over and over again with a lot of repetitive PPT slides, I wonder that there might be a decisive way to make the students learn a correct use in just one time. If I repeat the same teachings again and again, but the students didn’t understand, it would be wasting the hours and it would mean that I am just damaging students’ opportunities to learn.

Date: May 11th on Monday, 2020 from 9:50 to 11:20 (10:50 – 12:20 in JST)

Course: Japanese Listening 2

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 70 slides

Numbers of Students: 27

26 students stayed with me from the start to the end. One student was absent.

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : 26 students typed his/her attendance by themselves on BBS.

– Quiz 1 : 25 students answered.The question was conversions from Masu-form to Te-form for four verbs. Some students tended to put the small “tsu” for 1-dan verbs, but it is not correct. Putting a small “tsu” happens on some types of 5-dan verbs, not 1-dan verbs.

– Quiz 2: 24 students answered.The question was  to choose the correct combination of four particles from the selections. Students typed wrong answer that came from over generalization of  “Wa-ga construction”. Many students are sticking to “Wa-ga construction” and make errors on particles by over-generalizing it. I stopped them and made them answer again.

– Quiz 2: 24 students answered. Question was about tense for past, present progressive, and non-past. All 23 were right. The purpose of this question is to make students understand the usage of “V-te iru” in the concept of tense-aspect.

– Quiz 3: 24 students answered. The question was to choose the right combination of a question and an answer. When a question was done with “Naze (why)”, the answer must have the ending “-karadesu.”. This seems like the relation between why and because. This quiz intended to make the students find the relation between “naze” and “karadesu”.

– Quiz at the End: 25 students typed their own sentences in the form of “V-te kudasai”.

Teaching:

1: Basics of Japanese grammar

– Verb predicate sentences end with “-masu”, which is different from the endings of Noun and Adjective predicate sentences.

– Do not over-generalize “Wa-ga construction” to verb predicate sentences especially for transitive verb sentences for action/movement. Use proper particle for a word’s function.

2: Review of grammar in the last class

– Introduction of Te-form, “V-te iru” for ongoing actions, and uses of particle “-de”.

3: Listening using textbook material

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

When the students were typing the wrong answer by over-generalizing “Wa-ga” construction, I stopped their inputting with shouting and made them input again. Since some students had not yet input, this forced redo could not be used for knowing the first reaction of a student. However, I expected that could be an effective action to make the students realize that they got an wrong answer.

Another issue was that  I was ill-prepared for the activities with textbook’s listening materials. Making the students listen to and simply showing the answer for it was not a good teaching style. I had been concentrating on making PPT slides that reflects my own ideas about damage by “Wa-da construction” or other issue. But I didn’t spend enough time to think how to use and teach the textbook materials effectively to the students.