月: 2024年3月

Today is the sixteenth day of the spring semester 2024. There is no class on Wednesday. Though I wanted to go to the teacher’s room in the morning, I slept on the bed after the breakfast. When I woke up, it was already 9 a.m. I printed a quiz of 20 verbs and another quiz to measure student’s mastery about a conjunctive particle ”-to,”. The latter was for Thursday classes of third-year students. As for the former, I made the quiz of 20 verbs for the first-year students, however, I am really curious if the second-year students can answer correctly. Each of 20 questions asks a verb is transitive or intransitive. And asks to fill the blank in a sentence that uses that verb. So, the quiz asks not only a verb is transitive or intransive, also asks how that difference influences the choices of particles. I know that this quiz is easy for some second-year students, but not so easy for some. I decided to make both the first- and second-year students answer the quiz in coming classes. I had to make 110 photo copies of quiz.

I go to the teachers’ cafeteria only once a week. Usually Wednesday is the day. I went there a little late today. There were a few people, but food was still there. The problem was that almost of all food were oily. Many were filled with oil. Some were floating on the sea of oil. It is important for me not to take much on the tray in order to avoid an afternoon nightmare due to heavy stomach. I took food and put on the tray, but left the half of tray empty area-wise.

I took a nap for 2 to 3 hours. I hadn’t got full recovery from the cold which I got last Friday. Working until 11 p.m. was also a cause of lang nap. Other than napping hours, I worked to make PPT. I finished it by 9p.m. Then I graded a quiz of one class. Went to bed at 10:30 p.m.

Today is the fourteenth day, and also the start of the third week of the spring semester 2024. I taught three classes; one in the morning and two in the afternoon. Foreign teachers are allotted many classes on Monday. Why? Well, I don’t think it is good to write the reason here.

First two classes are Listening for the second-year students. I taught expressions for speculation;”mitaida” and “rashii”. I don’t think 90 minutes are enough to learn these two expressions well. And as other years’ students, most students don’t understand the difference between the speculation ”souda” and the hearsay “souda”.

Although I wanted to take a nap during lunch hours, even if it’s just ten minutes, I didn’t have time to do so. I had to carry a bunch of answer sheets of final exam in last semester from my room to the administrative building. Also, I needed to ask how to register scores of retests. I was carrying three bags on my both hands and shoulder. When I was going to cross an intersection of the road, I saw many cars made their turns without direction lights on.

Finishing several tasks in teacher’s room, I had to go to classroom for afternoon class. Early afternoon class was listening for another second-year students. And late afternoon class was conversation for the first-year students. There are a lot of things that I want to write here, but I have to stop to write. Actually, now I am writing this in the following morning. I need to prepare for Tuesday class.

Today is the fourteenth day of the spring semester 2024, and on Sunday. My Saturday was bad because I had got a cold. Body temperature was not so high, but I had sluggishness on my body, my throat, muscle, and joints were aching. After my supper on Saturday night, I took two tablets of cold medicine “Pabron” which I brought from Japan. And then I went to bed. I felt hot and became sweaty on Saturday night as well as Friday.

In the morning today, I again took Pabron after breakfast. Apparently, my condition was getting better through morning hours. I felt like as if I were HULK with his muscling up

Thanks to the medicine, I could finish grading of retests of three subjects in the morning. I went outside for lunch at noon. Every weekend I go to the campus cafeteria at noon and eat boiled dumplings. It is usually on Saturday, but this week on Sunday because of my catching cold. Ordering dumplings must be done by choosing 10, 15, or 20 in number. I always order 10. Since my stomach is not so big, if I order 15, I would mess my weekend afternoon by heavy stuff in my stomach. But here is another issue. Although I want to say 10 pieces, I often say 4 pieces. Four dumplings are neither the unit of ordering nor enough for lunch. Today again, my ordering was like “4 pieces”, “You mean 10?”, “Uh, yes,10” kind of conversation. In addition, many students order dumplings for “to-go”, I have to “I will eat them here”.

On the way back to my room, I bought 12 litters of bottled water. 12KG is one-fifth of my body weight. It was heavy to carry by my hand but I did that. I felt my energy back.

I had been analyzing quiz about particles (postpositions). I gave the quiz to the first-year students in order to measure how much my students had learned particles so far. Each student makes errors in his/her way. I spent whole afternoon hours to prepare for feedback to each student. Some were still unable to use the subject indicator ”-ga”, some don’t understand “-ni” was the destination indicator of action of a verb. Typical error was using the destination indicator “-ni” instead of “-de” for where an action takes place.

I started sending messages to each student after supper. The messages were not just showing his/her errors, but also asking answers to questions to confirm if he/she learned the right choice of particles. Communication on SNS had continued in Sunday night. Then I realized that the time was 9:43 p.m. already. I sent a message on class bulletin board saying “I am going to bed tonight”. Some ten messages were left “unread”. Those will be answered by me tomorrow.

Today is the thirteenth day of the spring semester 2024. Since yesterday, I have had symptoms of cold. I felt very hot in the bed last night. I was sweaty.

If there was no schedule today, I could have taken a rest whole day. But I had to go to a classroom and to supervise a retest of final examination of last semester. The test was for listening course. I had to play the audio material for the exam. Four students came to the classroom. The audio lasted more than 70 minutes. I was looking at students, but felt very cold in Saturday classroom.

After the test, I went to the administrative building, and printed quiz for coming week. There are not many questions on the quiz sheet, so, I usually four quiz sheets on one A4 paper. There are 50 students in the second-year and 56 in the first-year. I printed 13 and 14 sheets for each grade. I have to cut A4 paper into four. Thinking about time and effort to cut them, it might be better to one quiz sheet on one A4 paper. Yes, probably. But I like use resources minimum. I don’t waste papers.

I went back my room with answer sheet of retest and quiz paper still in A4 and left them in the room, I went out again. Saturday is a day to buy food of coming week. Since I got a cold and had a feeling of sluggishness in my body, I couldn’t walk fast. It was really an agony to walk long way to the grocery store. I bought a bundle of green leaves and green beans, Chinese cabbage, Radish, Mushroom, Ginger, Garlic, four apples and three oranges, and two pieces of pork. Buying pork meant that I needed to cook it soon. I wanted to stay on the bed, but I cooked the pork so that I could keep them in freezer.

Returning from shopping, I spent most of afternoon hours on my bed. But I had to grade the retest. I got up from the bed in the evening and finished grading Business Writing for the third-year students. I couldn’t do any work quickly because of headache and sluggishness.

Now I ate my supper and took cold medicine ”Pabron” which I brought from Japan. I am going to bed soon,

Today is the twelfth day of the spring semester 2024. I actually got a cold. It started with minor throat ache. Today I feel chilly and headache. This is the first cold in this semester, but I had got twice in the last semester. How many times will I catch colds in this semester? One thing is certain; when I feel tired, my body tends to catch a cold. This time is also such kind. It is likely that my body has lost resistance to the disease.

Although I have to grade retests of 22 students, I am going to bed soon tonight.

Today is the eleventh day of the spring semester 2024. Before the class in the morning, I was grading quizzes that I assigned to the first-year students on the first day of this semester. If I analyze the result, I could extract many information about errors my students made.

For example, many students erroneously answered for the question about a particle (postposition) that indicates where action takes place. Of course, Japanese and English are not the same, but let me explain what my students’ error are like through English. Bad answer is as follows;

I read a book to the library.

I think the sentence would be “I read a book in the library”. Again, Japanese and English are not the same, but in this particular case, I want to say Japanese postposition”-ni” is like “to” in English, “-de” is like “in”. My students should use “-de” for where action takes place. But they use “-ni” whose basic concept is a destination that an action heads towards. There are so many errors of this type like;

   I eat my lunch to the cafeteria.

   I study to the classroom.

   I work to the office.

When I see these on an answer sheet, I want to scream. I am even suspicious there might have been a teacher who taught wrong postpositions to the students.

Another example is what I found in one class of the two. It is about Ko-So-A words. I am not sure if there is an order of “This, It, and That” by distance in English or not. But anyway, there is words for middle distance in Japanese. It is a kind of intermediate word between here and there. Students in one class know the word. But students in another class don’t know the word. Probably it is because different teachers taught each class. The latter class’s teacher didn’t teach well about words for intermediate distance. Now what I am supposed to do is clear. I need to teach the word so that my students can learn.

That is about the first-year students. Two classes of today’s three were for the second-year students. I assigned a small quiz at the beginning of these two classes. Now I have got about 50 answer sheets on my desk. I have to grade them. But I would like to go to bed early tonight, because I am tired from three classes I had done today. From tomorrow, I have to grade much more answer sheets. Those are retests of the students who failed the final examinations of last semester.

Today is the tenth day of the spring semester 2024. I don’t have a class on Wednesday, although I have to do a lot of work for teaching. I woke up 5a.m. today. These days I write a blog post before going to bed in previous night, and I upload the post right after I get up in the morning. Today too, I uploaded my yesterday’s draft in the early morning. I ate my breakfast which were leftover of the supper last night, washed my cloths by the washing machine, hung the wet clothes in my room to dry out them, and started working as usual.

Today, I had been making PPT slides for my conversation class. They were for teaching NA-adjectives. There are two types of adjectives in Japanese; one is I-adjectives and the other is NA-adjectives. It is quite difficult for Japanese learners to properly conjugate these two adjectives. My student, too, feel it very difficult. What they are doing is to avoid conjugation of I-adjectives as long as they can. But such an effort is just producing errors. When conjugation is unavoidable, they conjugate an I-adjectives as if it is a Na-adjectives.

At noon, I went outside. It seemed that spring had come already. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. Snow and ice on the pavement had almost gone. People’s winter clothes had become thinner and lighter than two weeks ago. I had my lunch in teacher’s cafeteria a little late because I didn’t like congestion by many teachers in lunch time. I got my one jacket and two trousers back from a laundry after lunch. Though I wanted to buy citrus fruits in a fruits shop, I just went into a supermarket and bought milk and Cola.

I don’t think I need to write about my afternoon today. It was just nap and PPT making.

Today is the eighth day of the spring semester. And also, today is Monday. I have three classes on Monday; Late morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon. Of the three, two are the listening course for second-year students and one the conversation course for first-year students.

   I wanted to keep sleeping until 6 a.m. but I woke up at 4 a.m. Sleeping hours were not enough to start a week. So, I took short sleeping minutes twice today; from 7:30 to 8:00 after my breakfast and from 12:30 to 13:00 after my lunch. These things indicate that it is easy for me to fall asleep after eating a meal.

   In the classroom for the second-year students, there are big tables. 6 to 7 students can have a seat around one table. Last time, five students committed cheating during a small quiz. They were students who seated around the same table. So, this time I made them have a seat on five different tables. I guess that they understood my warning.

   Another small happening today was about my accent. The first-year students learned Japanese words about time and date today. When I pronounced “Shigatsu (April in Japanese)” in front of my students, I just remembered what I listened from radio recently. That radio show talked about the accent of “Shigatsu”. They introduced an episode in which someone in a studio was required to correct his or her accent of Shigatsu by the director. The radio personality expressed his empathy with Kansai people saying that they wanted to say “Shigatsu” with their accent.

   Accent of Japanese is so-called “pitch accent” consisting low and high pitches. The standard accent of Shi-ga-tsu is Low-High-High. When I uttered “Shigatsu” as a model pronunciation in front of my students, I remembered the episode, and quickly I started worrying about my accent. I took my electronic dictionary out from my bag and checked the accent of “Shigatsu” by the accent dictionary of NHK. And I realized what I pronounced was different from the standard. I said it with High-Low-Low. I apologized to my students and uttered “Shigatsu” again with Low-High-High accent

I was born and raised in northern part of Japan. The region is not in western Japan. But through my life and career, I spent much time with Kansai people. Thanks to communication of many years with them, my Japanese pronunciation is heavily affected by Kansai accent. I try to pay attention to my accent, because I often speak Japanese words with Kansai accent.

Don’t get me wrong, I would never be denial to Kansai accent. Kansai people are a group in Japan with fabulous culture. I respect them. Historically they have been the center of Japan. It is NEITHER which is good or bad, NOR superior or inferior. Important thing is that I have to be careful about the difference between the standard and Kansai accents. The worst is being unconscious with such issue when I teach Japanese language to foreign people. I think I have to check my accent more often using the NHK accent dictionary.