投稿者: liangzhilaoshi

Na-adjective “Kirei” causes many confusions between Japanese Learners (JLs). It is because the Na-adjective “Kirei” has the letter “i” at the end of the word. The following deals with this issue by estimating the damage on JLs’ utterances that contain adjectives. The Conclusion is that the damage on I-adjectives is more serious such that the Japanese teachers have to make efforts to correct the JLs’ errors.

1. Error Types

Two types of error E1 and E2 are described below. Considering the numbers of the words that are affected by each error type, it can be concluded that E2 causes more serious damage.

E1: Errors on Na-adjective “Kirei”

Some of JLs think that “Kirei” is an I-adjective. Such JLs conjugate “Kirei” as if it is an I-adjective. This type of damage is expected to happen only on conjugation of “Kirei”. It is not clear if the same errors occur or not on similar Na-adjectives “Kirai” and “Yukai” that end the word with the letter “i”.

E2: Errors on the entire word group of I-adjectives

Some of JLs think that I-adjectives conjugate identically to “Kirei” which is actually a Na-adjective. This type of damage is expected to happen on all I-adjectives that JLs know.

2. Occurrence of Errors

The author conducted quizzes to measure the occurrence of errors on I- and Na- adjectives. The result indicates that the error type E2 occurs slightly more than the of error type E1.

(1) Quizzes

 The Quiz was conducted in the fourth week of the second semester for the first-year students. 55 students answered. The quiz asked the proper ending of two sentences as below;

Q1: A sentence of predicative Na-adjective “Kirei”; past-negative

Q2: A sentence of predicative I-adjective “Omoshiroi”; past-negative

(2) Q1

 There are two selections in Q1; I-adjective ending and Na-adjective ending. Choosing I-adjective ending is wrong. Choosing Na-adjective ending is right because “Kirei” is a Na-adjective. The error indicated that the student thinks “Kirei” is an I-adjective.

(3) Q2

There are two selections in Q2; I-adjective ending and Na-adjective ending. Choosing I-adjective ending is right because “Omoshiroi” is an I-adjective. Choosing Na-adjective ending is wrong. The error indicated that the student thinks I-adjectives conjugate as “Kirei” does.

(4) Quiz Results

 Students’ answers are classified into four patterns as shown below. Numbers of students who answered for each pattern are also shown. 29 students answered correctly for both questions Q1 and Q2. On the other, 26 students answered one or two wrong answer(s).

A1: Two right answers for both Q1 and Q2; 29 students

A2: Wrong answer for Q1 and right answer for Q2; 10 students

A3: Right answer for Q1 and wrong answer for Q2; 13 students

A4: Two wrong answers for both Q1 and Q2; 3 students

3. Consideration of Quiz Results

(1) Error types and answer patterns

  29 students of answer pattern A1 are expected to have a knowledge about proper endings for both I-adjectives and Na-adjectives. 3 students of answer pattern A4 are likely that they have neither recognize differences between two adjectives nor correct forms for each yet.

  Answer pattern A2 corresponds to Error type E1. 10 students applied I-adjective ending to Na-adjective “Kirei”, while answered correctly to the I-adjective sentence of past -negative. Although these 10 students answered wrongly to Na-adjective, however, they know a conjugation pattern of I-adjective which “i” turns to be “ku”. It shows a progress on students’ so-called “interlanguage” to some extent.

  Answer pattern A3 corresponds to Error type E2. 13 students wrongly applied Na-adjective ending to I-adjective “Omoshiroi”, while answered correctly to the Na-adjective sentence of past -negative. The letter “i” of “Kirei” does not change by conjugation. These 13 students answered wrongly to I-adjective without changing the letter “i”. Therefore, they do not know a conjugation pattern of I-adjective which “i” turns to be “ku”. It seems that these students’ so-called “interlanguage” is still in the early stage.

4. Conclusion

The Conclusion is that the damage by not knowing conjugation of I-adjectives is more serious than the damage on “Kirei” by applying I-adjectives’ conjugation.

In order to estimate the magnitude of damage, severity and occurrence of errors must be considered.

(1) Severity by error types

The followings conclude that E2 is more serious in quality and quantity.

E1: Errors on Na-adjective “Kirei”

  Damage only happens on the word “Kirei”. And JLs making this error knows I-adjectives’ conjugation. Probably they can conjugate I-adjectives correctly. The numbers of words affected by this error are limited to one or very few. I-adjectives are not affected.

E2: Errors on the entire word group of I-adjectives

  Damage happens on all I-adjectives that JLs know, because JLs making this error do not know I-adjectives’ conjugation such as “i” turning to be “ku”. The large numbers of I-adjectives are affected by this error, while Na-adjectives are produced correctly.

(2) Occurrence of errors

  Students’ answer patterns indicated that the numbers of E2 are slightly more than that of E1. Answer pattern A2 corresponding E1 is observed in 10 students. Answer pattern A3 corresponding E2 is observed in 13 students. Since sample number is small, the author does not prove that there is a significant difference between A2 and A3 in numbers. However, it seems to be safe to say that E2 happens with the same occurrence or slightly more than E1.

(3) Magnitude of Damage

 E2 is more serious than E1, and E2’s occurrence is the same or more than E1. Therefore, E2 has the bigger magnitude of damage from both perspectives of severity and occurrence. Japanese teachers must pay more attention to how a student conjugate I-adjectives. If a student thinks I-adjectives’ conjugation is the same as “Kirei” that is a Na-adjective, the teacher needs to make effort to correct wrong conjugation of I-adjectives that the student makes.

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クイズに用いた2問は以下のような２択問題です。

Q1: きのうの旅館は きれ｛くなかったです  or　いでは ありませんでした ｝。

Q2: きのうのテレビは おもしろ｛くなかったです  or　いでは ありませんでした ｝。

Today is the twenty-eighth day of the spring semester 2024. If it were in Japan, today is the first day of the school year and fiscal year. But here, it’s middle of the semester now. I have three classes today because it’s Monday.

One class lasts 95 minutes. It consists from 45 minutes of the first half, 5 minutes of break, and 45 minutes of the last half. I usually go to a bathroom during 5 minutes break. After what I do in the bathroom, I wash my hands. So many people (men) don’t wash their hands, but I wash. There are three faucets in the entrance of a bathroom. And I found that water runs from  only one tap out of three. Two don’t work. At first, I thought it might be some kinds failures. But it is not likely to be a technical failure. Because the same things are happening in all the bathrooms in the classroom building. There is no bathroom that two taps work and one doesn’t, let alone bathroom in which all the three taps work. Only one tap runs water in every bathroom of the classroom building in this university.

So, it must be an intentional thing. Obviously, it saves water, good for water conservation. But I just imagine that there may be an educational purpose on this. You should not think that everything is favorable to you. If there are three faucets in bathroom, don’t expect all the three taps run water. Two are useless, only one works for you. This is a message to young university students. In their future life, they will encounter many difficulties. Not everything works for you, some are even harmful to you. Only things of less probability work for you. In order to survive and get along with difficulties, you have to think like this.

Do I imagine too far? Anyway, only one tap runs water; this is common to all the bathroom. The next problem is which of three gives me water. Usually, a tap on right or in center works. I haven’t seen so far that a tap on left runs water. It depends on each bathroom about which of right or center works. Probably this has another effect. That is to enhance your memory.

Today is the twenty-seventh day of the spring semester 2024, and happens to be Sunday that should be the day of rest. But I had to prepare for Monday’s two classes. I have to teach three classes on Monday, but two are the same subject. As of morning, only a half PPT slide was completed for one class. As for the other class, I had done nothing for PPT slides. Making one and a half PPT presentations in one day is obviously tough thing to do.

I also had to go the administrative building to print answer sheets of quizzes that would be used on Monday. I am going to give them to the first-year students in conversation class and the second-year students in listening class. Printing about thirty A4 paper didn’t take much time, but I talked to the chief about the situation in the classroom. I spent one hour in the teachers’ room.

In the afternoon, I talked with one student via videophone on Dingtalk. He asked my advice for his interview in the entrance examination of a graduate school. I don’t have much experience nor knowledge about academic world like graduate school. But through one hour talk, I think I gave him much advice such that he could get high score in the interview. I talked with him from 2 to 3 p.m.

After the talking, I worked very hard to make PPT presentation. I cooked my supper, but I decided to eat it after I finish today’s PPT making. I ate my supper at 10:50 p.m. I thought that if I could have eaten the supper one hour earlier, it would be much better for me to prepare for the new week. Perhaps I could have got one hour if I didn’t talk to one student in the afternoon. But I shouldn’t think like this because he needed my help.

I ate apple in late night supper. I felt the apple tasted unnatural as if artificial flavor was injected. I stopped eating those pieces of apple and threw them into garbage. Those apples were that I bought in campus supermarket, not that I bought in the store I go every Saturday. A small piece of seal was put on the apple, so I will try not to buy the same apple again by checking the seal.

Today is the twenty-sixth day of the spring semester 2024, if I count days correctly. It was two weeks ago when I got a cold. I haven’t got recovery well. Today, too, I spent several hours on the bed. I tried working to make PPT slides for coming week, but I couldn’t do much.

Since there was leftover of Miso-soup of yesterday, I threw Udon noodle into it and ate it for lunch. So, I didn’t go to campus cafeteria for boiled dumplings which I usually eat for Saturday lunch.

I went outside campus after 30 minutes nap in the afternoon. On the way to a grocery store, I saw people were selling strawberry along the road. Those strawberry must have grown in greenhouses.

Several years ago, I planted and grew strawberries in my garden. My strawberries were planted on the ground, not in greenhouse. The fruits of strawberries were harvested in the end of May. I thought growing strawberry was labor consuming through a year. It is under cover of snow in winter, so I did nothing during winter, but other than winter, I needed to take care of strawberry through three seasons. It was difficult for me to grow strawberry. But I think, when I retire, I will grow strawberry just small amount in my garden because they are expensive on the shelves of stores. Uh, strawberry thing has nothing to do with my current life, here.

I bought 1KG of pork. I told shop person to sell me 1KG, but he cut it by his hunch. Thinking about my health, So far, I had bought pork of less fatty part. But such pork was hard to chew and didn’t taste good. So, these days I buy a little fatty part of pork that is soft and easy to chew. I try to cut other oily and fatty food from my meals.

In my room, I cut the pork into small pieces and boiled. I wrapped a small portion of boiled pork with vinyl wrap. 1 KG pork were divided into six small portions. One went into refrigerator; this one is for Sunday. Five went into Freezer, they are for Monday through Friday. This means I eat small amount of pork every day. As for today, Saturday, I don’t eat pork but use boiled water that I used to boil pork. That boiled water can be a soup.

I want to write 400 words for each post. These days I couldn’t reach this target. But today, it seems I have done.

Today is the twenty-fifth day of the spring semester 2024. I have only one class in the morning, The class is conversation course for the first-year students. After the class, I just have been working in my room until the night. I graded answer sheets that I made my students answer yesterday. The test was about distinguishing transitive verbs and intransitive verbs. Not only for distinguishing, the test intended to tell my students that differences between transitive- and intransitive verbs affects when choosing particles. I found a problem from the test results. But I won’t write about it today.

Since it is Friday, vegetables remaining in refrigerator are almost running out. Moreover, there is no snacks, no sweets that I could eat at 10 a.m. or 3 p.m. I went to the campus supermarket at around 4 p.m. I bought two packages of potato chips, one long snickers, soft cookies, one litter of Coke and so on.

I cooked supper as usual at 6 p.m. When I tried starting eating at seven, I got to know that I forgot to turn the rice cooker on. I couldn’t start my supper at the same time as usual. I turned on switch of the rice cooker, and worked my job while waiting until the steamed rice became ready. I sent feedback about the test to my students. I asked them to answer again for the questions that they made wrong answers.

Some students believe that the particle “-o” used for transitive verbs, and the particle “-ga” is used for intransitive verbs. The former is right, but the latter about “-ga” isn’t so right. It is just there is a tendency that “-ga” is often used in an intransitive verb sentence, especially in short sentences. Transitive verb sentences can also use “-ga”, and intransitive verb sentences use not only “-ga”, “-wa” is also used in a lot of situations. In fact, many students have not learned that very basic foundation of Japanese; “-ga” is used for a subject of the sentence.

Today is the twenty-fourth day of the spring semester 2024. I have three classes. I always think that just one class is enough to make me exhausted. These days I teach adjectives to the first-year students.

There are two types of adjectives in Japanese; I-adjectives and Na-adjectives. Both conjugate in different ways. So, Japanese learners must distinguish the two and know conjugation patterns in each adjective. I-adjectives have the following traits; Its short ending form ends with “i”, and “i” is the connector between an I- adjective and a noun when the adjective modifies the noun. And Na-adjectives have the following traits; Its short ending form ends with “da”, and “na” is the connector between a Na-adjective and a noun when the adjective modifies the noun.

Here is a problem. Just one Na-adjective confuses all Japanese Learners. Because of that Na-adjectives, many learners don’t understand conjugation of I-adjectives. The word is “Kirei”. This word looks like as if ending with “i”. This letter “i” makes Japanese learners think this is an I-adjective, but actually which is not. I have repeated zillion times in front of my students, saying “’Kirei’ is not an I-adjective but Na-adjective ‘Kireina’”. Every time I shout this, I feel like I am “a cracked record” (although I don’t think 21st century people know what a cracked record is).

Today I made my students answer quizzes that contains a question about the word “Kirei”. Many students wrote wrong answers by thinking Kirei was an I-adjective because of the letter “i”. They believe their own interlanguage firmly that any adjective ending with letter “i” is I-adjective. This is not correct, Kirei, Kirai, and Yukai are examples of Na-adjectives that end with letter “i”.

My shouting “Kirei is not an I-adjective but a Na-adjective” is hardly reaching students’ recognition. I always think how I can open the doors of recognition that my students are closing most of the time. The doors help students shut uncomfortable information out, but also prevents from in-taking new knowledge. Some students eventually understand it, but some end up graduating from the Japanese major course without knowing that “Kirei” is a Na-adjective.

In the twenty-third day of the spring semester 2024

A lot of daytime dreaming.

Spending so many hours on bed.

Going outside only on lunch time break.

Foods were floating on the sea of oil in campus cafeteria.

My jacket and trouser has gone for two-day excursion.

Saw the old lady in a stationary shop was sleeping on the chair.

Bought a notebook from another shop.

No memory about afternoon other than making PPT slides.

Cooked my supper in dark kitchen.

Poured a spoonful SB curry powder into vegetable soup.

Sent 28 messages to my students and got 8 replies.

Soon I am going to bed.

Evey things are left incomplete.

Then I realized there is no 脚韻 in what I have written here.

Today is the twenty-second day of the spring semester 2024. There are not much things to write for blog post. I have just one class in late morning hours. It is for conversation course of the first-year students. There are two classes in one grade, I taught one class in late afternoon hours yesterday. In that class, one of two classes of first-year, so many students were watching their mobile phones. So, I gave a caution to another first-year students this morning, not to watch movies on their mobiles, but to concentrate on my teaching. The caution was effective for the class. I finished the class with satisfaction that I could teach a conjunctive particle “-kara” that expresses reason, an expression for purpose of transfer, and the past tense endings of verb sentences of Japanese.

Since I was told to check signatures on the bindings of final examination papers, I went to the administrative building soon after the lunch break. Actually, I had to finish checking before noon. But I had had a class. And I thought it was difficult to fulfill the requirement whose direction was on yesterday and the deadline is today. When I got to the teachers’ room and asked the chief, the bindings of answer sheets were already removed to the next process. I did nothing, and didn’t have to do anything. And then I went to the office of international exchange, talked a little about renewing of contract document for the next school year, and came back to my room.

I went outside again, went to the campus supermarket, and bought 12 litter of bottled water, two apples and seven oranges. I was tired. After carrying 12 KG of water to my room and eating two oranges, I took a nap at around 3 p.m. My fatigue accumulates most on Tuesday. From Friday to Sunday, I have kept making Power point presentation for the coming week. I have three classes on Monday and one in the Tuesday morning. That means I can do nothing in the afternoon of Tuesday. Today, too. When I got awake it was already 6 p.m. in the evening. It got dark outside. I started cooking my supper, and I uploaded a photo of my supper onto Dingtalk to show my supper to my students.

Today is the twenty-first day of the spring semester 2024. Since it’s Monday, I have three classes. During a class, standing at teacher’s desk is not my style. I walk in the classroom, get closer to the students, and try to extract students’ utterances as much as possible. Since I have three classes on Monday and Thursday, usually I walk about 14,000 steps on those days. The number of steps are recorded by my mobile phone which I usually put in my pocket in the jacket.

Dingtalk has a function to show a ranking of the day as to number of steps. In the night, at around 8 or 9 p.m., it shows a ranking of three persons who walked most, second, and third. But you can’t join the competition automatically. You have to register your number of steps manually. Even I walked 14,000 steps, it doesn’t mean I can be the first or second prize. Usually, I simply forget to register my number of steps in the evening, Today’s 14,471 steps should have been the second prize, but there isn’t my name on the ranking today.

Today is the twentieth day of the spring semester 2024. And it happened to be Sunday. There is neither weekend nor holiday in my daily life these days. I had been just making PPT for conversation class. I completed it a little after noon. I thought I would go to the campus cafeteria to eat boiled dumplings for my lunch, but I didn’t feel so hungry. So, I skipped my lunch. Then I went to the administrative building to use a printing machine in teacher’s room. I printed answer sheet for three quizzes; one for conversation class and two for listening classes. Since I printed four quiz answer sheets on one A4 paper. Though there are fifty-some students in each grade, I printed 14 sheets of A4 for one quiz. I wanted to save paper.

I brought printed A4 papers to my room. And then I went outside again to go to the same grocery store as yesterday. I wanted to buy 5KG package of rice. Besides, the weather was fine. I just wanted to walk outside under the spring sunlight in Sunday afternoon.

In the store, I found a carton of goat milk. That was what I was looking for, although I went there to buy rice today. There was a reason that I needed goat milk. I brought protein supplement from Japan because I thought food here lacked good amount of protein. Powder of protein supplement need to be mixed with some kind liquid to drink. So far, I have used milk because I couldn’t find goat milk in the Campus supermarket. But today I found it. I bought the carton in which 12 small packages were put. I also bought 5KG rice that is popular staple here. I just paid the money through electronic payment, and get out of the store. Then I did a small calculation. I deducted the price of rice from the total payment. I realized that the goat milk was more expensive than 5KG rice.

Walking along the road I was thinking; perhaps goat milk should be expensive. Cows are big. They can produce a lot of milk from their big bodies. But goats are small, mother goats must be spending hard times to produce milk for giving it to human kind. Besides, now the season is still early spring. Grass for goats to eat is nowhere. That must be a reason that I cannot find goat milk in Campus supermarket. Actually goat milk smells a little if comparing to Cow’s milk. But it’s okay. I will shake it with protein powder and drink it imagining voices of mother goats.