Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning

There has been one thing that I don’t write clearly because I don’t think it is appropriate to write about it. Since my students visit this blog, I think it would be better not to write what it is.

Monday;

I taught in a small class in morning. They are not students in Japanese department. Many people are saying that a native Japanese teacher should teach students in Japanese department, not the other department’s students. So I will be removed from the position in coming 2^nd semester. I got this class by coincident or even as an accident. I like my six students, but I cannot continue to teach them. I feel very sad because it will be like abandoning them. Their Japanese proficiency is specifically only reading. They cannot do oral/aural communication well. So I wanted to improve their communication skill, but time is almost running out. After the class was just a working on a computer. It took eight hours before going to bed.

Tuesday;

I don’t have a class on Tuesday. Waking up at 6, I started PPT making for listening class at 7 a.m. I finished it by 11. I started another task for my small class. It took six hours. And then I started another PPT presentation at 6 p.m that was for composition class. I couldn’t finish it by the time I went to bed.

Wednesday:
I taught two classes in the morning; the first was listening class, and second was the small class. I have to say I was ill-prepared for the small class. I took lunch and went to the teacher’s office to print some documents. It took a whole of the afternoon from 1:00 to 5:30, but I could not finish even one third of the entire volume. I went back to my residence and continued to work to make PPT presentation  for composition class.

Thursday:

Composition class was in the afternoon, but I hadn’t completed making PPT when I woke up at 6. I started working at 7, and finished PPT making at noon. The first class in the afternoon was the listening class which is for 1^st grade students. I have two classes of it and I basically teach the same thing to two classes. This week I checked how well they can use Ko-So-Ado words. Interestingly, Thursday class students were almost perfect (actually Wednesday class not). Anyway I had a problem with the composition class in early evening. The number of PPT slides was apparently short for 90 minutes class. I tried to use time to make student say the differences of transitive verbs and intransitive verbs of Japanese. However, what I prepared couldn’t last until the end. I don’t know if it’s acceptable or not, I finished the class 5 minutes earlier.

Friday:

Two composition classes for 2^nd grade are on Thursday and Friday. They must be the same. But I had to add some PPT slides for Friday class because shortage was apparent in the class on the day before. I started making PPT slides at 7 in the morning and finished it at 9. That was about onomatopoeia of Japanese. I expected that it could last ten minutes. Anyway once I finished PPT thing, took shower, and went to the teacher’s room. I had to print a lot of documents by the deadline. I had already done one third of it on Wednesday, however, I hadn’t done for the rest two thirds. I carefully checked the document and made some corrections. I completed that task around 2 p.m. and went back my resident. I boiled water and cooked Udon noodle for my late lunch. And then at 3 p.m., I went to the composition class. Teaching onomatopoeia went well for covering up the shortages of slides, although onomatopoeia is not used so often in composition but very much in manga. Actually I got a little problem in the class, but I should not write about it right now for the privacy of a student. I hoped that the student would have a nice weekend.

Saturday;

Saturday was another working day. The Japanese department issues monthly newsletters. I had to check and correct students’ draft. This time I got draft from four students. I returned the first draft last Sunday. Since I got three 2^nd draft this week, so I spent almost all day to check and correct three drafts. I went outside at noon to have lunch in the university restaurant and then went to a grocery store. I bought vegetable for the week. It seemed that prices went up because of the season.

Sunday;

Every weekend I evaluate and correct students’ compositions from Thursday and Friday classes. I couldn’t do that on Saturday because of newsletter things, so I started it Sunday morning at 7. I ate lunch in the university restaurant and went to a supermarket to buy rice. It was 5kg. I continued evaluation of compositions and finished one class at 5p.m., and then prepared for my small class in Monday morning. I had to evaluate compositions of second class. Snowy outside, it has turned to be white.

I was really exhausted by hard working of these days. Although still one and a half months remain for this semester, I would like to improve my working style in the 2^nd semester.

I drew the picture below long time ago for introducing Te-form of verbs. I don’t like the studying guy in the picture, because it reminds me of what I was in my university days. Why are you studying hard in the very last day before the exam? You see now it is almost midnight. Why didn’t you start studying three days before? Why couldn’t you expect this might happen if you didn’t study hard? It is so terrible. I don’t want to remember the feeling of that kind.

Monday;

I taught a small class at 8 in the morning. Since I wanted to print some handouts, I went to the teachers’ room. As usual, I hadn’t met any teachers there. So I left there once I finished photocopying handouts. They were three Japanese poems that I wanted to use in composition class. It was for educational purpose in classroom. So I don’t think there would be a copyright issue. The rest of the day was spent for making PPT that was to be used in the listening classes of the 1^st grade.

Tuesday;

No class, but I worked all day. PPT makings were for listening classes of 1^st grade and for composition classes of 2^nd grade. I practiced the class teaching in the early evening with measuring time.

Wednesday;

There were two classes in morning. I was making PPT for composition classes in the rest of the day. I could not finish it.

Thursday;

I started making PPT at 6a.m. I could finish it at 8, and then I started editing audio data for listening course. There were two classes in the afternoon. When the first class was over, I forgot to take my USB thumb drive off from the computer. I got to know it when I started the second class. Since the classrooms are in the different buildings and it is a little bit far to take it back by myself, I asked two male students to go get my USB memory. I think it was better for them to spend several minutes outside because they don’t like the class.

Friday;

The morning class became even smaller. There were only four students. I asked them to do a debate by two by two. One pair like doing sport outside or gymnasium that is real sport, and another pair like doing video game that is not real sport. Their proficiency for utterance was still not good to make discussion. So debate was not going well. After the class, I edited audio data for listening and evaluated some students’ composition. I taught a composition class in the early evening. They still feel it difficult to distinguish transitive verbs and intransitive verbs of Japanese. I got back my residence and kept working by 10 p.m. for submitted homework compositions.

Saturday;

I evaluated compositions of two classes in the morning. It was a disappointment that one third of one class didn’t follow my direction. I thought it was not easy nor fun to the students to write a composition by reading short Tanka poems on the text book. So I prepared three nice poems that would made it easy to write their impression. We read three poems in the classroom and were moved by them. But one third of students ignored three poems and wrote their impressions to Tanka on the textbook. Actually those students are below average. Perhaps my communications skill was not good for them.

I went to a grocery store when I ate my lunch. I made proofreading and correction very much in detail for three students in the afternoon. When I stopped working, it was 9p.m.

Sunday;

I made teaching materials by my computer all day. It was like from 7a.m. to 10p.m. I went outside lunch time only.

I just recalled what one man said to me seven years ago. He said, “a guy’s life is like you worked and worked, then you realize that you are already in 60’s”.

I couldn’t write my weekly logs for almost one month because it has been too busy.

Monday;

I taught in a class in the morning. That is not for Japanese course but for students who took Japanese test in entrance examination of the university. The class is small. After the class I went to the teachers’ room, worked there for one and half hours, but didn’t meet any other Japanese teachers. I took a lunch as usual. I made some audio data for listening course. It took three hours in the afternoon. Then I practiced two hours for Wednesday’s listening class.

Tuesday;

I went to haircut in the morning. Other than that, whole one day was spent for making listening materials. I should not write what it is for. But the problem is that there is the minimum requirement as to time length. It is too long to make.

Wednesday;

I taught in two classes in the morning. I went to a bank in the afternoon because I had to submit my mobile phone number as part of my bank account. One of third grade students took me to the bank. After that was four hours of audio data making for the listening course.

Thursday;

I was still making audio data in whole of the morning hours. I taught two classes in the afternoon. I asked the second grade students if they knew there were two types of Kanji pronunciations. It was surprising to me that they didn’t know there were On- and Kun-pronunciations for Kanji. Such a meta-knowledge may not help them learn Japanese. But it is second language learning by university students. I thought I had to tell them such basics of Japanese language some time in near future. After the composition class, I continued audio data making for three hours in my residence.

Friday;

From 7a.m. to noon, I made audio data for the listening course. I took a nap after the lunch and added some slides to PPT for composition class. Those slides were for comparison between transitive and intransitive verbs of Japanese. Early evening was the composition class. Getting back at 5:30, I continued audio data making. I realized that my audio data was still short for time requirements.

Saturday;

I started evaluation and correction of compositions from two classes of second grade students. In the writing Japanese, a writer need to choose and stick to one writing style out of two. One is Desu-Masu style and the other is Da-Dearu style. Even though I told students to write in Da-Dearu writing style, some wrote completely in Desu-Masu style, and many students mixed two writing styles. I wanted to finish evaluation and correction of 51 compositions in one day; hopefully it was like one class in morning and another in afternoon. But I couldn’t finish in one day.

Sunday;

Audio data making was the only thing that I have done today. It was like from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. It was still short for the requirement, but I thought I could make it more than that. I went outside only for lunch. I took nap for 30minutes. Other than that, I had no time to rest.