Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on May 22, 2020

Date: May 22th on Friday, 2020 from 13:40 to 15:10 (14:40 – 16:10 in JST)

Course: Japanese Conversation 4

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 62 slides

Numbers of Students: 24 of 28, 4 were recorded as completely absent

Fully attendant for 90min : 21

Shorter signing-in: 65, 59, and 44 minutes.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check y a student his/herself : 26 students input “Shusseki” onto BBS. Two of the 26 were actually recorded by the system, as completely absent.

– 1st Quiz: 23 students responded. The quiz was about “Ra-omission” among younger generation. The students were asked to choose one sentence that could  be “Ra-omission”. There were three sentences using passive, respectful, and potential “V-rareru”.

– 2nd Quiz: 21 students responded. The question was to find a similarity in use of the particle “-ni” in one sentence from the four. The particle “-ni” indicates a person who initiates an action in passive sentences as well as give-and-take sentences.

– 3rd Quiz: 23 students responded. The question was to think about emotions in the four situations in the textbook. Only one was positive (pleased), but three were negative emotions. The purpose of the question was to make the students know that Japanese passive sentences are used, in many cases, to express when a person gets damaged.

– Attendance check at the end: 22 students responded. Students were asked to input a passive form of a verb with ending “-ta”. Some students input passive forms of intransitive verbs. It is an interesting nature of Japanese to use intransitive verbs for passive expression. However, in order to introduce the concept of passive sentences, I should have limited the verbs for this question to transitive verbs only.

Teaching: 

– Review for short test that was about conditional conjunctive particles “-to,” and “-tara,”.

– Introduction of passive sentences using Dekiru Nihongo (Yellow).

– Practices of passive sentences using the textbook. The types of passive sentences were limited today to types in which the person making action was clear.

– Introduction of a conjunctive particle; regretful “-noni”

Homework Assignment:

– No homework assignment to submit that was for every students.

– Only four students were asked to send a mp3 or m4a sound data by speaking the script of conversation of two part time job workers; Park-san and Chin-san that was in Dekiru Nihongo (yellow).

Issues and Problems:

This is a conversation class. Therefore I don’t think it is my duty to introduce grammatical things about passive sentences. However, I was not sure how much the students have already got used to passive sentences. Perhaps I may need to spend more time for rote exercise like conversion to passive form together with exercise for meaningful conversation.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on May 22, 2020

Date: May 22th 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: 25 out of 28

90 minutes attendance: 16 students

Shorter attendances: 86, 86, 85, 84, 76, 57, 44, 37 and almost 0 minutes.

completely absent: 3 students

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check: 25. One student sent the message of his?her attendance, but the system recorded that student as “Completely Absent”. One student came late.

BBS was not used for quiz in this class as class 1836 on Tuesday. A student wrote 5 answers on his/her note or memo whatever, and then he/she was asked to send five answers right after the class.

Teaching:

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

1. Review for the 5-q quiz of the last class.

2. Writing a paper about the sightseeing of a particular prefecture of Japan.

3. Some tips for writing a composition using the textbook.

– Differences between particles “-wa” and “-ga”.

– A sentence that could avoid being “Wa-ga construction” for a Na-adjective “Yuumei-na” by particle “-de”.

– Intransitive verbs for perception ;”mieru” and “kikoeru”

Homework:

As mentioned in teaching #2, some tasks for writing a paper were assigned as homework.

– Enhancement for the document style.

– Shading your prefecture on the map of Japan.

– Making a table to introduce your prefecture with basic information

– Pasting these figure and map on the draft.

– Start writing the chapters for the introduction of the prefecture and its tourism.

Issues and Problems:

Perhaps it could be questionable as to what I am doing now. The question is whether or not it would be appropriate to teach how to make document style for a research paper in a composition class. There are two reasons why I do this. One is that I was actually criticized by another teacher for what I have done for composition class in the first semester. In order to avoid duplication or “encroachment on other teacher’s territory”, I chose this task. I don’t think any other teachers teach how to write a research paper. The other reason is that this is the only thing that I can deal with right now. I am less experienced to teach composition, but have some experience of technical writings.

I took a Walk after the two Online Japanese Classes on Friday

I went outside in Friday afternoon when I finished the online Japanese teaching.

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I walked on the road of a river bank.

 

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I was looking for something to take a photo. But there were not much to do so.

 

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I saw onions were thrown by the road. Probably a farmer thought it as useless. Already becoming soft, it didn’t seem edible.

 

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Mountain Sugana-dake was there, behind the paddy field.

 

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Iide Mountains was far from here. Snow remains only on valleys.

 

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On the way back on a bridge, I saw two birds. Flying and floating. Being capable of two things is great.

 

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It was already 5p.m. I have got to get back to my house because I need to cook the supper. I ate a slice of salmon with a bowl of rice in the supper.

Online Teaching for Class 1836 (Composition) on May 19, 2020

Date: May 19th 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 57 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

26 students participated for whole 90 minutes.

2 students were recorded for their short attendances: 84 and 11 minutes

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

– Attendance check by reporting his/her-selves: 27.

– 5 Quiz were given to the students during the class. Answers to the 5-quiz were sent to me right after the class. Quiz to be posted on BBS was not given today. 27 students sent the answers to me.

Teaching:

1. Review for the 5-q quiz of the last class.

Five questions and their answers were explained because many students answered incorrectly for that quiz. 1) the intransitive verb “-naru” uses not the particle “-o” but “-ni”. 2) In “wa-ga construction”, a thing with the particle “-wa” is containing, while a thing with the particle “-ga” is contained. 3) A sentence with “-ga” and “-ni” for an intransitive verb “kuwawaru”. Many students chose the particles “-o” instead of “-ni” because they thought the verb “kuwawaru” was a transitive verb. 4) Issue on the difference between “-made” and “-demo”. “-made” means the end of a period, while “-demo” means that something is still valid. 5) Particle “-de” placed directly after the age functions to indicates he/she did something at the age.

2. Writing a paper about the sightseeing of a particular prefecture of Japan.

Some tasks were given to the students as the homework assignment of this week. They are; corrections of the document style, pasting a figure and a table onto the draft, and start writing about the prefecture and its tourism.

3. Some tips for writing a composition using the textbook.

Homework:

As mentioned in teaching #2, some tasks for writing a paper were assigned as homework.

Issues and Problems:

I prepared and distributed the template to the students so that the document style could be unified. However, so some of them don’t understand why the designated template is used to write a paper and have already started writing onto a document of their own styles.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on May 18, 2020

Date: May 18th on Monday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Conversation 4

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

Numbers of Students: 24 out of 28. 4 students were recorded as completely absent.

Fully attendant for 90min : 20

Shorter signing-in: 44, 11, 3, and 2 minutes.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25. Of the 25, Two students were recorded as completely absent by the system. One came late and stayed for 44 minutes.

– 1st Quiz: 20 students responded. This was to tell the difference between a polite and overly friendly speech styles when making a suggestion.

– 2nd Quiz: 22 students responded. This was to choose a type of usages for the abstract noun “koto” in the forms of “-koto ni Suru”, two of “-koto ni Natteiru”, and “-koto ni Naru”.

– 3rd Quiz: 21 students responded. This had nothing to do with Japanese grammar. We learned one conversation in which “Oyako Donburi” was talked about. The question asked why “Oyako Donburi” was named like that.

– Attendance check at the end: 22 students responded. Each student was assigned to make a sentence using one of four conditional conjunctive particles “-to”, “-ba”, “-tara”, and “-nara”.

Teaching: 

-Reading and comprehending a poem “Kanashimi” by Shuntaro Tanikawa. This poem , using a conditional conjunctive particle “-tara”, was used for the quiz at the ending of the last class on Friday.

– Additional usages of “-tara” in conversations.

– Learning a conversation using conditional conjunctive particles.

Homework Assignment:

– The deadline of the small test for section 13 is on Wednesday night.

– Six students were asked to send a voice mail or MP3 by Wednesday night. Voice mail/mp3 is a student’s recording of conversation between two part time job workers.

Issues and Problems:

It was relief for me that most students could write a Japanese sentence using a conditional conjunctive particle that was allotted to each student. This is a class for conversation, but we have devoted to grammatical issues of conditional conjunctive particles “-to”, “-ba”, “-tara”, and “-nara” for more than one month.

Online Teaching for Class 1939 (Listening) on May 20, 2020

Date: May 20th 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 68 slides

Numbers of Students: 27

Every student stayed with me from the start to the end.

Students’ Responses:

– Attendance Check : All of the 27 students typed his/her attendance on BBS.

– Quiz 1 : Only two students responded. This is because my explanation was not enough to tell the students what to do. 16 variations were shown for the sentence endings for 4 types of predicates (noun, Na-adj, I-adj, and verb) with parameters of positive or negative and past or non-past. I wanted to get some data about which sentence endings were difficult for students.. This question didn’t work.

– Quiz 2: 19 students answered. Since the number was unusually less, perhaps a problem with internet connection might have happened, but it was not sure. The question was to distinguish two types of potentials that were actually the same expressions of “-koto-ga dekiru”. One was his/her capability and the other was situational potentiality.

– Quiz 3: 20 students answered. Question was to make a judgement of right-or-wrong for six verbs in Te-form.

– Quiz at the End: 24 students typed their own sentences that meant to doing something to examine, “V-te miru”. But the sentences showed that the student did not understand well the concept of “V-te miru”.

Teaching:

1: Basics of Japanese grammar

– The ending is affected by tense for Japanese sentences. It is necessary to pay much attention to an adverbial for time. If it means past, A sentence ending needs to change for past tense.

2: Grammar for section 20 of the textbook.

– “V-te miru” is used to express when someone does something new or special to examine it.

3: Listening activities using the textbook

– Task 1 and 2 of the section 20 of the textbook.

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

– It seems that Dingtalk has a problem with its recording functions for the messages that are input on pop-up message board. During a slide show, I quite often ask the students to input their answers for quiz. Almost all students input their answer onto the pop-up message board. However, once I finish the slide show, the pop-up message board also gets closed, and some of students’ answers do not appear on the Dingtalk’s message board. I have already compared the pop-up message board with Dingtalk’s message board during the slide show, and confirmed that some messages were surely lost.

But the problem is not so simple. There is another tendency that good students always leave the answers, while not-so-good and bad students do not leave their answers always. So, right now, my problem is that I cannot separate two factors; one comes from the system and the other comes from each student’s performance, when I found a question is left unanswered.

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

Date: May 18th 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 70 slides

Numbers of Students: 27

27 students stayed with me from the start to the end.

Students’ Responses:

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

– Quiz 1 : 26 students answered. This was to show that “tsumori” would be better only for subject “watashi-wa” from the point of view of politeness.

– Quiz 2: 27 students answered. This was to tell the difference between “-kara ” for reason and “-kara” for the order of actions.

– Quiz 3: 27 students answered. This was to make sure that a verb must be in dictionary form before “-maeni” and be  in Ta-form before “-atode”

– Quiz at the End: 27 students typed their own sentences that consisted of the subject, place, an object, and a transitive verb.

Teaching:

1: Basics of Japanese grammar

– In “wa-ga construction”, the whole uses “-wa” and a part uses “-ga”.

– A subject uses “-ga” and an object uses “-o” in a transitive verb predicate sentence. subject

2: Review of grammar in the last class

– “-Koto”, “tsumori”, and “tokoro” are a type of nouns that are often used to connect a verb and a particle. They are less meaningful but functional.

3: Listening using textbook material

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

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