Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning

Date: April 3rd 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: 24 out of 28

90 minutes attendance: 17 students

Shorter participation: 85, 80, 72, 72, 70, 58, 10 minutes

completely absence: 4 students

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check: 26. But of the 26, two students were recorded as “Completely Absent” on the system.

Quiz 1 through 5: Students were asked to submit 5 answers in the form of text right after the class. Only 18 students sent me the answers.

5 point ; 2 students, 4 point; 15 students, and 3 points by one student. Many students made an error by over-generalizing of “Wa-ga construction”. That’s why I wrote the issue of “Wa-ga construction” on post on Tuesday for class 1836.

Teaching:

The same as composition class for 1836 on Tuesday. However, I changed some slides.  I replaced 1836 students composition to 1837’s in the feedback session.

Homework:

The same as composition class for 1836 on Tuesday.

Issues and Problems:

The same problem of over generalizing of “Wa-ga construction” was even worse in this class 1837.

When I prepared for a question for this composition class, I found that auxiliary verb “-souda” could be used in the past tense sentence. Last week I told 1837 students in conversation class, that guessing “-souda” was used for present and future. To be exact, I should have told that guessing “-souda” was for future side from talking point on the time sequence. And talking point could be in past.  This matter necessitated some additional slides for conversation class in the afternoon.

Date: March 31th 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 55 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

24 students participated for whole 90 minutes.

3 students exhibited short attendances: 81, 52, 25 minutes

1 students was totally absent.

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

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

Five quiz were assigned during class. Students sent the answers to me right after the class. Only 18 of 27 students did so.

Teaching:

1st half: Feedback of proofreading and corrections of the second draft of “My Winter Break”

2nd half: Feedback of quiz that was done in the last class. The quiz was mainly focused on Tense/Aspect issue of Japanese sentences. One of ways for draft correction was also taught in the class. That focused on inconsistency between start and ending of a sentence.

Homework:

300 letters advertisement for a new product of electric appliance for family use. A sample as below was shown to the students.

Issues and Problems:

I found a huge issue about “Wa-ga construction”. Students always over-generalize “Wa-ga construction” for the sentences which are actually not suitable for using this particular construction. This is because Japanese textbooks in this country always impress learners as if “Wa-ga construction” were an important basic of Japanese.

There is a simple reason why “Wa-ga construction” is thought to be important. “Wa-ga construction” is, as indicated by the name, structural. It has the structure of word order with the theme, a subject, and predicate. It is simple and easy to understand because there is no need to analyze words functions that are specified by several kinds of particles. There are only two particles in “Wa-ga construction”; “-wa” and “-ga”. Since these two are used for theme and subject, it is not necessary for a learner to think about what function each word has in a sentence. For other sentences that are not “Wa-ga construction”, students need to analyze words’ functions through several particles in conjunction with verb.

It is easy to understand, so students stick to “Wa-ga construction” and then come to think it is important. But I think it is more important for Japanese learner to learn particles and their functions. I think I need to stop students’ over-generalization of “Wa-ga construction” and to teach use of other particles and their functions.

Date: March 27th 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 73 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

19 students signed in whole of the 90 minutes class. 9 students had been signed in shorter than 90 minutes: 75, 74, 66, 50, 32, 7, 3minutes, 37seconds, and amazingly the shortest was 5seconds.

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check: 27. But of the 27, one student signed in late.

Q1: Definitions of the word categories “Nouns”, “Verbs”, and “Adjectives” : 18

Q2: Questions about Tense consistency in Japanese : 18 (they are all wrong answers)

Attendance Check at the End: 19

Teaching:

Feedback of proofreading and corrections

Tense-Aspect of verb predicate sentences of Japanese

Homework:

Rewriting a Composition about how the student was spending this winter break within 300 characters.

Issues and Problems:

Students are just inputting the same answer that the top student has input. If the top student input a wrong answer, all the students will make the same mistake. This was the case for the second quiz. The right  answer was 2 out of 1, 2, and 3. In the class 1836, the first student input “1”, then all the following students input the wrong answer 1″. In this class 1837, the first student input “3”, then all the following students input the wrong answer “3”.  I want each student to think about the answer by his/herself.