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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.

Many are Still in Green in the Garden on May 16th

It is cloudy today. So the color of the photographs are not vivid.

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Pink Azalea among white one. It is amazing that part of branches has flowers of different color.

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Even in one flower, two colors are co-existing.

 

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Will I be able to eat sweet peaches in summer? I should not expect much. In Japanese, if you have a wish that you are expecting in future, it is said that “A devil is laughing at you”. This tells you that you shouldn’t expect too much in the future because it is uncertain.

 

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I didn’t expect the silver berry to have fruits because there is no other silver berry tree for pollination. So, of course, this is only one or two fruits on the tree and it is likely that it will fall without growing.

 

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I planted two kinds of prunes for pollination each other. However, there are very few numbers of fruits are on two trees. One tree has two fruits and the other has none. When it successfully turns to be purple, I will put the photo of it, if it happens.

 

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They are Tsugaru-Apple. This shows another issue to me. I’ve got to reduce the number of the fruits for the better harvest. I don’t know exactly but it should be one fruits with 20-30 leaves.

 

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Strawberry is still green, too.

 

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This is just a weed.

If my work for online teaching is not so heavy, I would like to go outside and have a fun in this comfortable season. It is not because of corona virus, but heavy duty for the online teaching that prevents me from living healthy life.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on May 15, 2020

Date: May 15th 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 61 slides

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

Fully attendant for 90min : 19

Shorter signing-in: 60, 15, 2, 1 and 1 minutes.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 24. One of 24 was recorded as completely absent by the system. Another student came late.

– 1st Quiz: 22 students responded. The quiz was to find a right combination for particles “-nara” and “-tara” in the sentence to stop drunken drive.

– 2nd Quiz: 22 students responded. The question was to select one of “-to”, “-ba”, “-tara”, and “-nara” for a sentence about one-time event in the past.

– 3rd Quiz: 21 students responded. The question was to find an erroneous sentence that was a suggestion but using the conditional conjunctive particle “-to”.

– Attendance check at the end: 18 students responded. Students had to choose one of four conditional conjunctive particles for a poem written by Shuntaro Tanikawa.

Teaching: 

– Some important expressions not only conditional conjunctive particles but also auxiliary verb “-youda” that appeared in the conversation between Park-san and Chin-san.

– Practical applications of conditional conjunctive particle “-tara” in conversations such as “V-tara doudesuka” using the textbook.

Homework Assignment:

– Short test was assigned as a homework that was about conditional conjunctive particles “-to” and “-tara”.

– Six students were asked to send a voice mail by speaking the script of conversation of two part time job workers; Park-san and Chin-san.

Issues and Problems:

I have to explain a lot about how to differentiate usages of four conditional conjunctive particles because the textbook is dealing with those four almost at the same time. I don’t think it is good because the students must be confused.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on May 15, 2020

Date: May 15th 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 61 slides

Numbers of Students: 25 out of 28

90 minutes attendance: 21 students

Shorter attendances: 33, 14, 11, and 3 minutes.

completely absent: 3 students

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check: 26. One student sent the message of his?her attendance, but the system recorded that student as “Completely Absent”.

Quiz was done in other way. So far I have asked the students to input their quiz answer onto BBS. This gives me a quick response, but has a deficit that most of the students are just looking at other students’ answer at the top and inputting the same answer. In order to reduce chances to refer to other students’ answers, I made them answer on a sheet of paper during the class and made them send the answers immediately after the class.

Teaching:

– Basically the teaching was the same as another composition class on Tuesday for the class 1836. Several slides were added to help the student understand better.

– Review and explanations for two questions of 5-question quiz in the last class (it was the same as on Tuesday).

-1: Particle “-o” should not be used for the intransitive verb “Naru” .

-2: There is a difference between “V-te ita” and “V-te kita” in terms of tense-aspect.

– Writing a paper

The student were asked to start a new task to write with good formatting as a document. The topic was sightseeing of a particular prefecture in Japan. Students were asked to write a paper with internet research and to make a suggestion for the better sightseeing services of the prefecture. Each student chose his/her prefecture in the class.

– Learning using the textbook.

Explanations and exercises as to how to use particle “-ni” and other issues like the difference between “-made” and “-demo”.

Homework:

– The students were asked modifying the template for the paper by filling the chapter titles of our task.

Issues and Problems:

During the class, approximately the half of the students chose a prefecture that they wanted to write about. But 10 students were remaining undecided. Actually this class 1837 has got a big problem with part of students. Their attendance is bad, and they are reluctant to hard studying. In order to make those students choose their prefecture to write about, I had to send messages.  Some have replied t me, some not.

Afternoon Walk under Strong Sunshine in Niigata, JAPAN.

I don’t have any online class on Thursday. However, I know that I have to work through the night today because there are two classes tomorrow. I felt I had to exercise my body, so I took a walk again.

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Rice had been already planted in the paddy fields around here.

 

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I wish that this small rice seedlings grow and survive. When autumn comes, it will turn to be golden and bring us a rich harvest.

 

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There are not many flowers in my house, so this was the chance to take a photo of flowers. This orange one is a popular spring flower in Japan.

 

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I don’t know much about this type of flower. Is this a German Iris or something?

 

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I think this is a kind of chrysanthemum. And the word chrysanthemum always needs auto-spellcheck.

 

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Let me tell ya. I am not a railway geek. I believe that being a railway geek surely ruins boy’s fortune. A boy should never be a railway geek. (Perhaps reiterating it makes a reader suspicious of me, though)

 

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Again. I have to pay more attention to a utility pole. When I took this photo, I should have avoided coinciding of the utility pole and the peak of the mountain behind.

Tomato and Egg Plants in the Garden on May 12th

These days I work through the night several times a week. I don’t like TV says “tele-working” is new normal and “Online education” is wonderful, this and that. I would say it is too hard for me to spend day to day because I have to make three hundred PowerPoint slides a week. I can’t go outside. Even I cannot find a time to go shopping in the nearby supermarket located in the place of 10 minutes walk from the house. Actually I could not take a bath for several days because I worry I may fall or get a heart attack in the bath. My fun these days is just to look at the garden and take a photo.

 

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Because I have to work very hard for online teaching kind of things, I do not have time to manage the garden. So I asked a neighbor to plant something on the garden. He and his friend planted some vegetables already.  The photo is a tomato. The card on the ground says that this is Tomato that is easy to grow.

 

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Yellow flowers of tomato.

 

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He planted egg plants.

 

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The fruits of peach are too many. I have to reduce the number of fruits for better harvest. And comes below are Azalea flowers in the garden.

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Azalea flowers last short. When they are gone, the garden will have little flowers. If I had a time, I would like to plant many flowers to make the garden colorful and beautiful. But it is sure that the online education kind of things prevents me from doing so.

Online Teaching for Class 1836 (Composition) on May 12, 2020

Date: May 12th 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 59 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

22 students participated for whole 90 minutes.

5 students were recorded for their short attendances: 83, 86, 42, 33, and 20 minutes

1 student was completely absent today

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

– Attendance check by reporting his/her-selves: 27. ( One sent a message to tell me his absence beforehand)

– 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. 24 students sent the answers to me.

Teaching:

– Review and explanations for two questions of 5-question quiz in the last class.

-1: Particle “-o” should not be used for the intransitive verb “Naru”.

1st question of 5-q quiz was given for this issue. Still one student thought it was okay to use “-o” for the sentence of intransitive verb ” Naru”.

-2: There is a difference between “V-te ita” and “V-te kita” in terms of tense-aspect.

– A new task for the last half of the second semester

The student were asked to start a task to write with good formatting as a document. The topic was sightseeing of a particular prefecture in Japan. Students were asked to write a paper with internet research and to make a suggestion for the better sightseeing services of the prefecture. Each student chose his/her prefecture in the class.

– Learning using the textbook.

2nd question of 5-q quiz: Choosing the right combinations of particles. Over-generalization of “Wa-ga construction” is one issue. But there is another issue that even in the case that “Wa-ga construction” can be used, many students make error for uses of particles “wa” and “ga”. 10 students made this type of error.

< For time limitation, the rest of the teaching was suspended to be recorded here>

Homework:

– The students were asked modifying the template for the paper by filling the chapter titles of our task

Issues and Problems:

< No time to write now>

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on May 11, 2020

Date: May 11th 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 58 slides

Numbers of Students: 26 out of 28, Number of completely absent was 2

Fully attendant for 90min : 14

Shorter signing-in: 85, 81, 80, 77, 49, 46, 32, 31, 28, 11, 5, and 4 minutes.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 26. Of the 26, one student was actually recorded as completely absent from the class. One came late and stayed for 32 minutes.

– 1st Quiz: 23 students responded. The quiz was to find the best conditional conjunctive particle for a sentence stating an incident that had happened already. Some of the best students answered one that was not the best, and then many students followed it. At the point that two thirds students had input the same answer, one student typed the best one. And then remaining one third students input the (new) best answer.

– 2nd Quiz: 18 students responded. The question was to choose the better conditional conjunctive particle for a sentence of invitation. This is to make the students know realize that conjunctive particle “-to” cannot be used for will, suggestion, command, and so on.

– 3rd Quiz: 23 students responded. The question was to choose one nature which is applicable only to “-nara”. “Nara” cannot be used if the condition phrase is quite certain.

– Attendance check at the end: 20 students responded. This was to choose the best explanations for four conditional conjunctive particles “-to”, “-ba”, “-tara”, and “-nara”.

Teaching: 

– <No time to write them now>

Homework Assignment:

– Nothing to submit to the teacher this time.

– Six students were asked to send a voice mail by speaking the script of conversation of two part time job workers.

Issues and Problems:

A lot of grammatical thing to teach. It is too much for conversation class.