I am a native Japanese speaker who used to teach Japanese in a university somewhere on this planet. Currently I don't work but stayed in my house in Northern part of JAPAN. I hope that you could enjoy reading my posts and know what life in Japan is like.
I put a feeder in the garden. A sparrow comes every morning.
Another lily flower opened in the garden. It is good to cut the flowers to make the bulbs grow bigger.
A solar eclipse was seen today. The photo shows the shapes of the sun that is the lights coming through the paper screen of Japanese style “Shouji”. The paper is worn out and has got many holes. So I need to change the paper screen…if I have time to do so…
The reason why I write this blog is to make records about my activities as a Japanese teacher. So I don’t mind if people hardly visit this blog. Having said that, it is really amazing that only very few people come here these days….
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.
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.
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.
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?
The new writing system of wordpress has made difficult to write and edit a post. It seems a HTML geek is proud of building an automatic function to form “DIV” commands. But it is almost painful to me. I want someone to get the old simple writing system back.
By the way, I asked a neighbor to cultivate the land and grow vegetable so that the garden would not be an abandoned bush. On Monday the person was cutting weed for us but he mistakenly cut the lily that I planted several years ago (Because the lily was among the weed). He brought that lily to my house with some apology. My mom put it in a brown glass bottle of a cheap “energy drink”. Since the bud of lily was still young, we didn’t expect the lily would be able to bloom. To our surprise, the lily flower opened in the following day.
Lily “Lollipop” in the bottle of Lipovitan D
I bought bulbs of lily “Lolipop” several years ago in DIY shop “Komeri”. The bulbs were discounted because they were apparently unsold long time. I thought, if it were going to be a waste, I would buy and plant them in the garden. After that, Lollipop had been in bloom every year even though I didn’t take care of them. The neighbor didn’t cut them all, so some are still left on the ground.
Lily “Lolipop” on the Ground
Yesterday my mom went outside around the noon to get her lunch. It was so hot, so she gave up staying outside, just buying a lunch box, and then came back home. She told me to look at her lunch box that costed only 330 Japanese Yen. She wanted to show that there were a lot of things in a cheap lunch box that would be equivalent to three USD. But I have to say, I don’t think it is good to eat those cheap processed food. It should be bad for health.
330 Yen Lunch Box (=3USD)
Green beans that I planted are growing in the garden although it will take more than a month or so from now until the harvest.
Young Green Beans are Growing on the Ground
I found the gooseberry was turning to be red. Taste? of course anything from the garden is always sour. I have already confirmed it by the most reddest goose berry fruit.
Fruits of Gooseberry Now Turning to be Red
And this morning I found that flowers of hollyhock started blooming.
Rare Color of Hollyhock Flower
Uh,… I wasted my one hour to make this post. The blog that people hardly view is called “an isolated island on the continent” in Japanese. Mine is also like that.
A fruit of silverberry (goumi) has turned to be red. Actually there were only three fruits on the silverberry tree. This is one of them.
I have already taken this one. Only two goumi(s) remain on the tree now. They are still green.
I don’t know whether this silverberry is edible or not. As was obvious for the case of strawberry, nothing from my garden can be sweet. They are always sour so that you would like to jump up when you put them in your mouth.
I left the silverberry like this on the table. Soon I found that this small tiny red fruit had disappeared. I asked my mom where the silverberry had gone. She answered that she offered it to the deceased my father. And then I saw this small red thing was put in front of my dad’s photo.
Flower of cucumber has already had the young cucumber .
This is a flower of egg plant.
This is a flower of pumpkin. If it was a female flower, it would be a pumpkin. But you know, the flowers are almost always male flowers. A female flower is very rare. There is no easy thing in this world.
This yellow flowers are not of pumpkin but zucchini.
These vegetables were not that I planted. Since I am very busy in days and nights for the online teaching things, I asked a neighbor to cultivate and grow vegetables in my family’s garden. I should be thankful to him.
But there is a one vegetable that I planted.
I planted some seeds of green beans. Seeds were sold by 200 JPY (tax exclusive) that was approximately equivalent to 2 dollars. The seeds were imported to Japan from the country where the authority used teargas to disperse the peaceful demonstrations in order to do a photo op in front of a church to show a man holding a book that he had actually never read at all (probably).
But anyway, it is not that big issue, I mean, where the seeds came from. Because they have germinated safely on the land of Japan. If I can harvest green beans, I will boil them just a little, dip into mayonnaise, and then eat them in hot summer night with chilled beer. I am looking forward to doing so.
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.
This is to show you how to take care of your tomato in this time around.
You need to cut off the buds of branch so that the main stem can grow. The orange circle in the photograph shows a bud coming from between the main stem and a leaf. It should be removed.
This photograph shows, by a blue circle, that an unnecessary branch has been cut off. In this time of season, you need to check this very frequently like almost everyday. If you leave those branches to grow, your tomato will be terrible and chaotic with many stems and branches such that you want to start singing “Welcome to the jungle!”. Cut them off, or you will get small size tomato.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 