Today is the ninth day of the spring semester. I have only one class on Tuesday. The class is of conversation course for first-year students. Actually, I repeat the same teaching as yesterday. There are two classes in one grade, I teach the same course for both classes. Like yesterday’s class, students in this class are neither acquainted to Japanese date numbering system. It is necessary to know how to say each date on calendar. But I just wondered if it’s worth remembering that date numbering system. I mean, it sounds funny if someone call the date with the same way as number, but it can be a burden for students to memorize 10 different words only for reading a date on calendar. Is it important to memorize at this stage of Japanese learning? I couldn’t find my answer.
After the class, I came back to my room. And it was almost noon. I heated miso soup that was leftover of last night. I threw udon noodle into there. That was surely an ugly lunch for a human kind, but I ate it. In order to digest the udon, the blood in my body moved to my stomach. The move reduced blood in my brain. It resulted in an hour of nap.
I went to the administrative building in the afternoon. I needed the chief’s signatures to bind test sheet of the final examination in the last semester. That was for the purpose of document keeping. Then I got back to my room and just spent hours by making Power point slides with listening to Bach’s England Suites.
Never one day finishes without trouble. I found that Friday’s retest of my subject would coincide another teacher’s class. Four students will take the test. It was difficult for me to ask a student one by one for available date and time because such students have other retests at this time of semester. I asked one student to make arrangement for date and time with other three students. He had done it for me. He and I talked in English because he was still not good at communication in Japanese. Anyway, the new schedule of retest is on Saturday. We couldn’t do it on weekday. I’d say, weekend is also working day to me.
I have to grade a lot of answer sheet of retests on coming weekend. These are examinations of Listening, reading, and business writing courses of last semester. Difficulties of a final examinations in the last semester and a retest at the beginning of the following semester are the same. That means that, if an unsuccessful student hasn’t studied hard during the winter/summer breaks, he/she will usually get even lower points in retest than in the final. I hope this won’t happen to my students.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 