Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on June 19, 2020

Date: June 19th on Friday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Basic Composition 2

Used app: Video conference on DingTalk, BBS of the class was also used simultaneously to show the students some pictures.

Numbers of Students:

  – 24 students input their attendances on BBS. However only 19 students sent me their compositions at the end of the class. Also several students replied to me in the interview session. Therefore the self-claiming attendance is not accurate measure to record students’ attendance. 

Class Activities:

 Three activities were done in the class.

 -1: To proofread and correct their paper about tourism of a particular prefecture of Japan. This was a task only in the first session.

 -2: To compose a description about 4-picture manga which was one of three that were drawn by the late Machiko Hasegawa. This was a task in the second session. Those compositions were sent in the form of JPEG to the teacher when the class was over. 

 -3: Each student was called by teacher one by one to video call. He/she was asked to read out part of his/her paper for 1 minutes and 30 seconds. The teacher gave a feedback for writing and/or speaking. Since these interview took time, this activity had been done all through the first and second sessions. So two activities were simultaneously ongoing; 3 and either of 1 or 2.  17 students could made interviews with me. 

Homework:

. – No HWA

Issues and Problems:

 On Tuesday 16th for class 1836 , I called each student one by one after I closed video conference. That took minutes only just to make a connection. So for this time, I was just keeping the video conference turned on, I called a student in that conference. This might have been a disturbance for other students to write their composition. However, I wanted to save the class time.   

Online Teaching for Class 1836 (Composition) on June 16, 2020

Date: June 16th on Tuesday, 2020 from 15:30 to 17:00 (16:30 – 18:00 in JST)

Course: Japanese Basic Composition 2

Used app: Video Conference on DingTalk. BBS was supplementary used to show pictures that were materials for composition. Powerpoint was also used but only on the teacher’s computer screen.

Numbers of Students: 28.

Students’ Responses:

 -1: Attendance check at the beginning: 26 students responded. One didn’t.

 -2: Submission of composition at the end of the class: 25 students sent me photographs of their composition on sheet of paper. Two students didn’t. 

Class Activities:

 -1: In the 1st session, the students were asked to proofread and revise the chapter of suggestion in their paper.

 -2: Each student was called and read part of his/her paper. Teacher gave him/her advice.

-3: In the 2nd session, the students write a short essay to describe one of three mangas that were shown on BBS. The students were required to take a photo of their hand writing and send it to me.

Homework:

To write abstract, conclusion, and remarks for the paper.

Issues and Problems:

I sent comments on their composition to describe a manga one by one after the class.

Online Teaching for Class 1836 (Composition) on June 9, 2020

Date: June 9th on Tuesday, 2020 from 15:30 to 17:00 (16:30 – 18:00 in JST)

Course: Japanese Basic Composition 2

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 58 slides

Numbers of Students: 28.

– 90 minutes attendance: 24 students

– One student was recorded as complete absent through the class time by the system. However, the student sent me the answers of 5-question quiz. Three students were recorded their shorter participation; 84, 83, and 79 minutes.

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

 -1: Attendance check at the beginning: 27 students responded. One came late.

 -2: Connection check in the middle of the class: 25 students responded to the question about stroke order of the kanji “必”.

  -3: Attendance check at the end: the answers of 5-question quiz were sent to me right after the class. 25 students sent. 8 student got the perfect scores of 5. But of the eight, two students sent their answers more than 20 minutes late. 

Teaching:

Review of 5-question quiz of the last class. Writing a research paper about tourism, and some grammatical issues from the textbook.

Homework:

To write abstract, conclusion, and remarks for the paper.

Issues and Problems:

< no time to write them right now>

Online Teaching for Class 1939 (Listening) on June 18, 2020

Date: June 18th on Thursday, 2020

in 7th and 8th sessions from 15:30 to 17:00 (16:30 – 18:00 in JST)

Course: Japanese Listening 2

Used app: Video Conference on DingTalk. One image file was used supplementary  on BBS. I was looking at PPT slides during the class. The PPT slides were not shown to the students, shown only on my computer screen. Those PPT slides read the scripts and have embedded mp3 files to make it easy for me to play the audio.

Numbers of Students: 26: One student was absent.

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : 24 students typed his/her attendance on BBS. One was absent through the class, and two came a little late.

– There was one incident in which a student didn’t answer to my calling. This resulted in reducing the score for grading.

Teaching:

– Redo of Exercise IV of the section in the textbook. The exercise includes the construction of  [Subject]-wa [Place]-ni arimasu/imasu which means an existence of someone/something.

– Rote exercise of Ta-form of verbs.

– Exercise I of section 24 in the textbook, which includes the use of abstract noun “tokoro” for two aspects on time sequence; one is just before, the other is right after.

– Introduction of “Tari, tari” construction.

– Exercise II, III, and IV

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

< I have no time to write them now>

Online Teaching for Class 1939 (Listening) on June 17, 2020

Date: June 17th on Wednesday, 2020

– 1st and 2nd sessions from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

– 3rd and 4th sessions from 9:50 to 11:20 (10:50 – 12:20 in JST)

Course: Japanese Listening 2

Used app: Video Conference on DingTalk, Several slides of Powerpoint were used only on my computer display. 17 slides for 1-2session, 10 slides for 3-4 session. These PPT slides show me the scripts of listening materials and have embedded mp3 files so that made it easy for me to play the audio.

Numbers of Students: 27

–  24 students typed his/her attendance on BBS. Three seemed to come late.

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : 25 students typed his/her attendance on BBS. One came late.

– There were two incidents in which a student didn’t answer to my calling

Teaching:

1-2 session: Redo Exercise III and IV of the section 23 in textbook.

New teaching; Exercise I of the section 24

3-4 session: Exercise II was skipped. Exercise III was done to learn “tari-tari construction”, and Exercise IV that was a story telling was listened to

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

– Due to the heavy work load, I changed my teaching style from PPT slideshow to video conference. This was the first time for me to use video conference for the class. So I did not make it well. I got some problems to be improved in this new style.

– It needs some consideration how to check the students attendance more exactly.

Online Teaching for Class 1939 (Listening) on Jun. 15, 2020

Date: June 15 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 52 slides

Numbers of Students: 27: One student was recorded with shorter login, 86 minutes

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : 27 students typed his/her attendance by themselves on BBS.

– Connection Check: 26 students responded. Questionnaire was to ask which types of summer festivals student wanted to visit and see; Aomori Nebuta, Sendai Tanabata, Bon-Odori (anywhere), and Fireworks (anywhere).

Teaching:

1: Review of the last class

 – Auxiliary verb “-tai” for wish was explained. 1st quiz was about use of “V-tai”

 – Redo of Exercise I of section 23 in the textbook, that are using “V-tai”. 2nd quiz was about selection of particles

 – Redo of Exercise II of section 23 that are also including expressions using “V-tai”.

2: I-adjective “-hoshii” for wish to possess

 – 3rd Quiz to confirm the right use of “wa-ga construction” as a preparation to introduce “-hoshii” that is usually taking the form of “wa-ga” construction.

– Basic construction, differences from a similar auxiliary verb “-tai”, and “hoshigaru” for the third person. Whether or not a student has learned “-tai”, “-hoshii”, and “-hoshigaru” was measured by Quiz #4. 

 – Exercise III of section 23 that was using “-hoshii” and “-hoshigaru”. Quiz #5 was done with the similar purpose to #4.

Homework Assignment:

– The students were asked to send me a mp3 or m4a audio file with recording two sentences including many “small-tsu”; some are before explosive sounds and some before friction sounds.

Issues and Problems:

22 students of the 27 got the full scores for 5-question quiz. It is said that such a “ceiling effect” is a good sign for a test to measure students learning achievement. But actually I am doubtful about why their scores are so good.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on June 12, 2020

Date: June 12th on Friday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Basic Composition 2

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 57 slides

Numbers of Students: 22 out of 28; 5 students were thought to be absent based on the system and responses.

– 90 minutes attendance: 21 students

– One student was recorded for shorter attendances of 62 minutes.

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

 -1: Attendance check at the beginning: 25 students responded. Of the 25, it seemed that three students were not participating because of no responses to the class activities.

 -2: Connection check in the middle of the class: the internet connections were checked by making the students input Alphabet onto BBS. 20 students responded. Actually one student input it 8 minutes late, this was judged that the student was not with me at the time of question. This was a question to ask the stroke order of one Kanji that meant “certainly” and/or “surely” as shown in the figure 1 below. 19 student answered C. There was only one exception of F that meant her stroke order was not covered by A through E. Japanese use either of A, B, or C that are commonly accepted. But A is being taught in school recent years. On Tuesday class, many students answered that their stroke orders were none of A, B, or C. So I added D and E for the class 1837. But this time almost of 1837 students answered with C. I don’t know the reason why many 1836 students answered differently.       

  -3: Attendance check at the end: the answers of 5-question quiz were sent to me right after the class. 21 students sent. Only one student got the perfect scores of 5.

Teaching:

Teachings were almost identical to the class for 1836 on Tuesday.

Homework:

Homework assignment was also almost identical to what was assigned for class 1836.

Issues and Problems:

I forgot to make quiz #3 when I was making PPT slides for Tuesday composition class 1836. So I gave the 1836 students a quiz only by my voice on Tuesday. I again forgot to make quiz #3 today. One student pointed that out by typing on BBS saying “Teacher, is there quiz #3?. Then again I gave the 1837 students the quiz #3 only by my speaking. For that particular question #3, 4 of 21 students just gave up answering. It meant that several students are not good at listening. This course is not listening but composition. So I don’t think it is my duty in this course to enhance the students’ listening. However, it seems that such students listening abilities are not in a good level at the time of the end of second years, because I said my question very simply and also used English. Can I, or, how can I incorporate listening activities into composition class, if I try to improve their listening?    

Figure 1. Stroke Orders of a Kanji “必”

Online Teaching for Class 1939 (Listening) on June 10, 2020

Date: June 10th 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 57 slides

Numbers of Students: 26

One students told me his absence beforehand. 23 student stayed with me from the start to the end. Thee students were recorded for their shorter signing-in; 84, 84, and 69 minutes.

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : 25 students typed his/her attendance on BBS. One came late.

– Connection check at the half way point: 26 students responded. This was just a questionnaire to ask which Häagen-Dazs icecream a student wants to eat, from six selections. Two students chose two.

Teaching:

1: Rote exercise to read numbers

– 1st quiz was asked. Question was to choose a series that could fit in six sentences that were to be filled with number and counting word. Everyone got the right answer.

2: Review of the section 22 of the textbook.

– Review of four constructions; “V-te mo iidesuka”, “V-te wa ikemasen”, “V-nakereba narimasen”, and “V-nakutemo iidesu”. 2nd quiz was asked in order to check if a student could apply “V-nakereba narimasen” and “V-nakutemo iidesu” correctly to two sentences.

– Redo of the exercise #3 and #4 of the section 22 of the textbook. 3rd quiz was asked after Exercise #4 that was using a word “Hashi (chop sticks)”. The quiz was asking low-high ascent  of Japanese words.

3: The section 23 of the textbook.

– Introduction of an auxiliary verb “-tai” that is used for expressing wish.

– Exercise #1 of S.23: Quiz #4 was asked focusing on uses of particles “-o” and “-ga” in the sentence that was using “wishing” auxiliary verb “-tai”.

– Exercise #2 of S.23: Also this exercise focuses on “wishing” auxiliary verb “-tai”. However some conversation in the exercise uses an abstract noun “tsumori” for one’s will. Therefore the quiz #5 asked to choose a sentence of a will that had similarity with “Tsumori”.

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

– As the class gets near to the end, it becomes more difficult to adjust teaching to the time schedule. I am almost always running out of time, but today I got three minutes or so just before the ending. Fortunately I had put a practice on the slide that was usually the “today’s summary”. I used the practice to adjust the time, or in other words, to spend extra minutes. So I thought today that it is good to have a PPT slide near the end, which has flexibility to use in order to adjust the remaining minutes.

– Many students got full scores for 5-question quiz. If it is showing that the students are studying hard, it would be okay. But it makes me anxious because their high scores look somehow artificial, actually. I should not say anything uncertain, but I would say the online teaching has a lot of problems and defects.

Online Teaching for Class 1939 (Listening) on Jun. 8, 2020

Date: June 8 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 60 slides

Numbers of Students: 25: Two students told me their leaves beforehand.

24 students stayed with me from the start to the end. One student was recorded for his?her? shorter watching that was 65 minutes.

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : 25 students typed his/her attendance by themselves on BBS.

– Connection Check: 23 students responded. Questionnaire was to ask which flowers seeds a student wanted to plant; morning glory, sunflower, or salvia.

Teaching:

1: Basics of Japanese grammar

– Numbers and counting words corresponding to types and shapes of what a nouns indicates. Although kanji is used for counting, most of them are different from Chinese.

– Another caution was made; a combination of number and counting word usually does not bring a particle. It is like an adverbial. Quiz #1 was a question to check if a student understand this or not.

2: Review of the last class

– Most of the minutes were spent for the review on the constructions that were taught in the last class.”V-te mo iidesuka”, “V-te wa ikemasen”, “V-nakereba narimasen”, and “V-nakutemo iidesu”. Quiz #2 was a question to check if a student could apply those “V-te mo iidesuka” and “V-te wa ikemasen”, to sentences in a conversation. Likewise Quiz#3 was a question to check if a student could apply “V-nakereba narimasen” and “V-nakutemo iidesu”.

3: Redo of Exercises I and II of the section 22 of the textbook. Quiz#4 was asked to check if a student could use “V-nakereba narimasen”.

4: Exercise III of the section 22 of the textbook. Quiz#5 was asked to check if a student did understand the outline of what he/she listened.

Homework Assignment:

– No homework, but the students were told to listen to Exercise IV and study themselves.

Issues and Problems:

– I used many exercises from a famous Japanese language textbook in order to introduce several constructions and to facilitate understanding for them. However, even though that book is also famous in this country, most students don’t have the book. We used them in the online class, but after the class, the students cannot review what and/or how they learned the constructions by the book they don’t have. Maybe I should have stuck to the textbook that we have, although it is not the best material to learn.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on June 5, 2020

Date: June 5th on Friday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Basic Composition 2

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 63 slides

Numbers of Students: 22 out of 28; Six students were recorded as absent.

– 90 minutes attendance: 19 students

– Shorter attendances: 84, 60, and 54 minutes were recorded for three students.

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check at the beginning: 23 students responded. Of the 23, one student was recorded that they didn’t watch the streaming.

A question and responses on BBS in the middle of the class: 18 students responded. This was a question to ask the day’s highest temperature by the weather forecast. The students input numbers in Celsius of the city he/she lives now. Temperatures varied form 20 to 35 Celsius degree.

Submission of 5 answers of quiz right after the class: 18 students submitted. Only one student got the perfect scores of 5. Average was 3.2 point.

Teaching:

Teachings were almost identical to the class for 1836 on Tuesday.

Homework:

Homework assignment was also almost identical to what was assigned for class 1836.

Issues and Problems:

Like I wrote one week ago, I no longer have any practical ideas to continue the teaching except writing a paper about tourism in each prefecture in Japan. It is like there is no well-organized curriculum, no strategy, but only short term tactics. I mean one of the short term tactics is to make feed-backs for errors on 5-question quiz on the class one week before. It is good to improve students’ Japanese by picking up a particular issue. But each student is different. I mean one issue is not applicable to every students. For example, I explain one issue about an error that some students made. That explanation is useful to the student who made the same mistake, but not for the students who did not make that error. And it is obviously the nature of Hodge-podge things, my teaching is not streamlined at all. I think that, to the students, my PPT slides seem to be too confusing and complicated to understand. I still have four weeks in this semester, but I am worrying that I may be messing up towards the end. I think that I had done well in the first semester for this composition class for the second grade students. But somehow I have burned out. I failed to organize a good curriculum for the second semester. What I think is that, if I make one year curriculum for this composition class by averaging what I have done in the first and second semesters, it would be very streamlined curriculum. I wished that I could enhance my composition class by reviewing and reorganizing the experiences that I got in this year. But last week I was told by the chief that I would not be assigned to the composition class in the coming first semester.