My another photo blog “LQ Laoshi’s Photo Gallery”(outside wordpress)
Dec.21 on Monday
9:05-10:25: Reading class, online, for class 1939. The article was actually weird one in which a TV anchor interviewed a historical person who was brought to the modern times by a time machine. The interviewee was brought from 1000 years ago, Murasaki Shikibu who wrote the world oldest long novel “Genji Monogatari (aTale of Genji). I expected that my students would be interested in female literature around 11 century in Heian era of Japan. After the class I took a rest until the lunch and spent two hours for uploading the last week’s weekly log to the wordpress. The rest of the afternoon was just nap and rest on the bed. My fatigue accumulated for the semester. 17:30 – 19:30: Cook and Supper. I bought some commodities from Amazon.co.jp after the supper. The shopping took two hours. And then I went to bed.
Dec.22 on Tuesday
I requested eight books to the city library in the morning. And then I started working to calculate students’ grading for the conversation class of this semester. Grading composes of the test result and performances in classes through the semester. Two are 50 to 50 in proportion. For the performances, I combined three factors to calculate. Of course the attendance is the most important. I added other two things to the attendance: One is scores of right answers to the quiz during a class. The other is how good a student responded to my questions during a class. Both are actually “Big Data” because 55 students took the classes 17 times. All the numbers are written on my business notebook by handwriting. Here is an issue; those numbers must be typed in the excel spreadsheet in order calculate the scores. In the last semester, I did that right after the class in the same day. In this semester, I decided doing this at the end of the semester because it would affect preparation for the next class if I input data about quiz answers and students’ performance right after each class. Now is the time to input “Big Data” of whole semester at one time. Actually I realized that the way in the last semester was better than inputting huge data one time at the end of semester. It is not because of accumulated fatigue at the end of the semester. If I don’t input students’ performance during semester, I cannot know how a student is doing better or worse. Every time I ask a student to answer my question during class, I need to choose a student who is suitable for asking that particular question. I mean, “This question is a little difficult, so it is better to ask an excellent student”, or “This question is a basic one, it is better to ask a below-average student”. If I input the students’ performance class by class and make it visible during semester, I can easily make a judgment for this kind of decision. In this semester, I don’t have such a good reference. Looking at the result of students’ performance, I found that my evaluations without data are not correct for some students. That is what I regret for this semester.
Dec.23 on Wednesday
Since February, I turn the light on every morning and turn it off night, at the altar where my dad’s photo is put. Having passed ten months, the fluorescent light has almost ended. If a deceased person’s photo is placed in the dark, it is NO good. I thought I would change it to a LED light of less electric and more longevity. I went to D.I.Y. shop in the morning to buy a LED light bulb, code, and a switch. Went back home I tried putting the LED light above the altar. My fault was that I didn’t think about how I fixed the bulb. It was already in the afternoon when I complete the LED lighting because the work took more than three hours. After that I made some PPT slide for the last class of conversation class on Thursday.
Dec.24 on Thursday
9:05-10:25 was conversation class for sophomore students, let’s say, the Class A. I taught the auxiliary verb “-souda” for hearsay. The important thing is the difference from “-souda” for inference. This class was the last one for Class A. Since the conversation class was canceled once some time middle of the semester, the Class A only had chances to take conversation class 16 times in this semester. IN the afternoon, 13:40-16:00 another Class B also took the conversation class. But Class B had chances to take my class 17 times. In order to treat both classes A and B equally, I made the last class a special one for Class B. At 13:40, I started the class with a test with 40 questions. I am going to evaluate students’ answers during spring semester, not now, because now is the time to grade for the semester. My purpose is that I would like to make individualized teaching that is suitable to each student such that can overcome his or her weaknesses. And then I made the students the first half of the old tale “Kasajizou” and made them write what would be the last half of the story by guessing. Actually I did the same thing last year. At that time some students wrote that old lady got angry with what her husband did. I wouldn’t say it is bad inference, though, this time, most students could predict what the ending of the story would be like correctly.
Dec.25 on Friday
I did the final examinations of conversation class; one class in the morning, the other in the afternoon. It was a pair work of conversation. I made the students make conversation for a task, record it to mp3 or m4a, and send it to me. The tests in the morning and afternoon went almost well for 28 pairs of 56 students. However, two pairs were problematic. I should not write about them in detail here.
After the afternoon test, I had to cut and make slices of salmon. It took more than hour. So my supper was delayed a little than usual. I worked two hours for grading, 40 minutes for bass practicing, read an English book a little, and then fell asleep.
Dec.26 on Saturday
I went to the morning market in Niitsu in the morning. This was the last market in this year. I worried about sold out of Ms.Yamashita’s Kimchi, I left home early. So, before 10 a.m., I was already back in home. Then I wasted three hours for uploading two blog posts here and https://blog.goo.ne.jp/liangzhi.
After taking a long nap in the afternoon, I worked to calculate the gradings of the students’ performance in the conversation class, for rest of the day.
Dec.26 on Sunday
I spent all day to evaluate the final examination of the conversation class. That’s it.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 