タグ: education

Fatal Error on Quiz about Transitive- / Intransitive Verbs

Today is the fifteenth day of the spring semester 2024. Yesterday I gave one class of the first-year students a quiz about Japanese verbs. The quiz was to distinguish five verbs if it was a transitive or intransitive verbs. Actually, a transitive verb and an intransitive verb are different for most of the Japanese verbs even if their actions are similar. In the quiz, I showed an example, that was “Taberu (=eat)”. And I put two images; A= a person is moving him/herself to the direction of arrow, B= a person is exerting his/her force onto an object at hand. I didn’t use the terms “transitive- / intransitive verbs” because the students were still the first-year. Five verbs were; Get-up, Go, Drink, Get back, and Speak. All were basic ones.

I marked the quiz last night and found many strange answers. Many answers said “Nomu(=drink)” is an intransitive verb. Several answers even said “Iku (= go, but also with some nuance of come)” is a transitive verb. I started wondering why this could happen.

In the morning today, I brought the same quiz to another first-year student class. There are two classes in one grade. I made my students answer at the beginning of the class. Right after I got all answer sheets, one of students said that the example was incorrect. Looking at the example “Taberu (= eat)”, I found that there was a tick on the image for intransitive verb. The verb “eat” is, of course, a transitive verb. That was my fault that made my students answer a lot of funny selections about transitive- / intransitive verbs. I apologized to my students.

If I find something’s strange, the first thing I need to do is to check if it’s my fault or not, before thinking it as someone’s fault.

In order to stop my students having wrong concept about transitive- / intransitive verbs, I have already made another quiz with twenty verbs today. I will use this new quiz on Thursday and Friday classes.

Rescheduling Retest for Students who failed the Final Examination

Today is the ninth day of the spring semester. I have only one class on Tuesday. The class is of conversation course for first-year students. Actually, I repeat the same teaching as yesterday. There are two classes in one grade, I teach the same course for both classes. Like yesterday’s class, students in this class are neither acquainted to Japanese date numbering system. It is necessary to know how to say each date on calendar. But I just wondered if it’s worth remembering that date numbering system. I mean, it sounds funny if someone call the date with the same way as number, but it can be a burden for students to memorize 10 different words only for reading a date on calendar. Is it important to memorize at this stage of Japanese learning? I couldn’t find my answer.

After the class, I came back to my room. And it was almost noon. I heated miso soup that was leftover of last night. I threw udon noodle into there. That was surely an ugly lunch for a human kind, but I ate it. In order to digest the udon, the blood in my body moved to my stomach. The move reduced blood in my brain. It resulted in an hour of nap.

I went to the administrative building in the afternoon. I needed the chief’s signatures to bind test sheet of the final examination in the last semester. That was for the purpose of document keeping. Then I got back to my room and just spent hours by making Power point slides with listening to Bach’s England Suites.

Never one day finishes without trouble. I found that Friday’s retest of my subject would coincide another teacher’s class. Four students will take the test. It was difficult for me to ask a student one by one for available date and time because such students have other retests at this time of semester. I asked one student to make arrangement for date and time with other three students. He had done it for me. He and I talked in English because he was still not good at communication in Japanese. Anyway, the new schedule of retest is on Saturday. We couldn’t do it on weekday. I’d say, weekend is also working day to me.

I have to grade a lot of answer sheet of retests on coming weekend. These are examinations of Listening, reading, and business writing courses of last semester. Difficulties of a final examinations in the last semester and a retest at the beginning of the following semester are the same. That means that, if an unsuccessful student hasn’t studied hard during the winter/summer breaks, he/she will usually get even lower points in retest than in the final. I hope this won’t happen to my students.