Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning

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.

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:

<no time to write them right now>

Date: May 13th 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 66 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 : 26 students answered.The question asked the relation between “Naze” in the question and “-karadesu” in the answer which seems to have similarity with English’s “Why?- Because”.

– Quiz 2: 26 students answered.The question was to distinguish the function of a noun “tokoro” that can mean just before, ongoing, and right after

– Quiz 3: 26 students answered. Question was about a noun “koto”. The students were asked to choose one sentence from four, in which “koto” meant a decision by the one’s will.

– Quiz at the End: 26 students typed their own sentences that meant like “A person can d osomething”(of course in Japanese) .

Teaching:

1: Basics of Japanese grammar

– Intransitive verb predicate sentences and particles used in such sentences.

– Wa-ga construction for existence focusing on relations between the topic “wa” that contains and the subject “ga ” that is contained; in other words, “wa” for the entire and “ga” for a part. The students not only over-generalize “Wa-ga construction”, but also reversely place the entire thing and a part in the wa-ga construction. Also a caution was given to the students. the subject is unclear in a “Wa-ga construction” because it has the topic and the subject. It is better to use another construction that has a clear subject in order to make a sentence to say an existence of a thing and matter.

2: Review of grammar in the last class

– The section 18 of the textbook that contains some expressions using “V-te iru”.

3: Introduction to the section 19 of the textbook

– Functional nouns like koto, tsumori, and tokoro. Especially the expressions for capabilities were explained for both two types. One was that a person has potentiality to do something and the other was that the situation allows someone to do something.

– Exercise1 and 2 of the section 19 in the textbook.

Homework Assignment:

– No homework was assigned.

Issues and Problems:

– I used many PPT slides to make the students understand that there is a relationship of “contains – contained” in Wa-ga construction. “Contains” uses “-wa” as the topic and “Contained” uses “-ga” as the subject. But some students often place those words in reverse. It seems that, rather than teaching the same thing over and over and over again with a lot of repetitive PPT slides, I wonder that there might be a decisive way to make the students learn a correct use in just one time. If I repeat the same teachings again and again, but the students didn’t understand, it would be wasting the hours and it would mean that I am just damaging students’ opportunities to learn.