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Today was the fifth day of the spring semester in 2024, also the final day of the first week. I taught just one class today. It was the conversation course for the first-year students. Again, I couldn’t get the power source for my laptop computer. In order to save the energy, I made the computer display as dark as possible. The battery lasted until the end of the class. After the class, I came back to my room straightly. Although I wanted to take a rest, I continued to work. I scored small quizzes that I had assigned the second-year students. And then, I found a problem.

In the last semester, I realized that my students of listening course didn’t prepare before the class. They came to the class without listening to audio materials of the textbook. So, I decided adopting new way to make my students listen to audio mp3 before the class; first, I upload mp3 onto Dingtalk to share the listening material, second, students listened to it and take notes about what they listened, and third, at the beginning of the class, I made my students answer to small quiz. I make questions such that a student cannot answer if he/she hasn’t listened to audio materials.

The problem I found was that four students with high points actually didn’t download the mp3 file from Dingtalk. The four were sitting at the same desk with one student. That one student did download mp3 and also got high points. Probably that student’s answers were shared by four cheating students. But I don’t know if that student showed the answers to the four knowingly or not. Every time I found a cheating, I give the student punishment. But not only the cheating student, I also punish the student who helped the cheating. This time I am going to make the points of the four zero. But I need to be careful about how to deal with that one student.

   So, today was the fourth day of the spring semester in 2024. I didn’t want to get up early, but I awoke at around 4:30 a.m. Probably my body is still living in Japan standard time. I had been making PPT by 9:10 and left my room at 9:30 for the class. The first class of today was of listening for the second-year students. Since I realized in last semester, that the second-year students hadn’t learned basic things well, I decided spending more time for new words and mechanical practice this semester. What I tried through mechanical practice today was to make my students get used to make sentences of hearsay “Souda”.

   Today’s second class was of conversation for the first-year students. I went to a classroom at 1:20 p.m. and prepared for my teaching. The first thing I did was to connect the AC adopter to an outlet on the teaching desk. The AC adopter provides DC to my computer. Though the computer has battery inside, it doesn’t last long. Since I had two classes in the afternoon, I can’t help but connecting my computer to the outlet.

Let me skip the class activities that I had done in that early afternoon class. When the class ended, I found that my computer’s battery was very low. I realized that it didn’t mean that I could get electric even if there was an outlet. There are many connecting jacks on the teaching desk. They are for USB, VGA, HDMI, microphone, and outlet. But actually, some connections are unstable because of poor contact, and some are not connected at all. This time, the outlet didn’t provide any electricity to my AC adopter.

I moved to a different classroom for the late afternoon class, and fortunately I could get electricity from the outlet in that classroom. But there was another connection problem in that room, too; the HDMI cable couldn’t send audio data because of poor contact. So, I used two cables; VGA and audio cable. If the system on the teaching desk was built and checked well, a teacher doesn’t have to think about how to connect his/her computer to the system.

After the three classes, though I was tired, I went to a supermarket in the campus. I needed drinking water. I carried 10 litter with two 5-litter bottles. Then I scored quizzes, cooked my supper, and wrote this. Okay, now it’s the time to go to bed.

I got up in the morning before alarming because I still spend my days with the Japan standard time which goes one hour faster than time here. I ate my breakfast at 6:30. My breakfast is always leftover of supper in the night before.

I had a conversation class in morning hours. They are new students to me. They were surprised by hearing my age when I introduced myself. There are two classes in a grade in Japanese department. I taught a conversation course for one class yesterday, and for another class today. So, I did the same thing as yesterday. Teaching two classes with the same subject is good for me, because it reduces my workload.

  I gave them a quiz; writing of Hiragana and Katakana characters, Selections of particles (postpositions), sentence endings, and Ko-So-A demonstratives. Yesterday I thought the level of first-year students were low, but today I think it is still the beginning of a long journey of second language learning.

After the lunch, I went to the office of Japanese department and talked to the chief. And then dropped by the international exchange office to say hello. I came back my residence at 3:30p.m., took a long sleep till the evening because I was so tired.