タグ: English

Date: May 8th 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 59 slides

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

Fully attendant for 90min : 16

Shorter signing-in: 86, 82, 63, 37, 24, 16, 16, 6, 4 minutes, and the shortest was 2 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 24. Two students came late.

– 1st Quiz: 19 students responded. The quiz was to find a sentence using the conditional conjunctive particle “-to” from four sentences.

– 2nd Quiz: 21 students responded. The question was to check the students’ understanding for limitation of use of the conditional conjunctive particle “-to”.

– 3rd Quiz: 23 students responded. The question was to make a student complete a conversation by filling the blanks correctly with understanding the difference between “-temo” and “-to”.

– Attendance check at the end: 19 students responded. Like the quiz No.3, this was also to ask proper uses of conditional conjunctive particles “-temo” and “-to”.

Teaching: 

– Conditional conjunctive particle “-to”, especially for  its limitation for the latter clause. Expressions like intention, invitation, and/or command are not used in the latter clause when the preceding clause uses “-to,”.

– Introduction of another conditional conjunctive particle “-tara,” including comparison with other conditional conjunctive particles “-to,”, “-ba,”, and “-nara,”.

Homework Assignment:

– Nothing to submit to the teacher this time. The students were asked to evaluate a short test for the section 12 by him/herself.

– 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 rote exercise (mechanical trainings) for sentences with “-to” and “-tara”. The students must have been tired and fed up with.

Date: April 27th 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 60 slides

Numbers of Students: 22 out of 28, Number of completely absent was 6

Fully attendant for 90min : 17

Shorter signing-in: 79*2, 67, 59 minutes, and the shortest was 19 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25. Of these, three students were recorded as completely absent by the system.

– 1st Quiz: 15 students responded. The quiz was to measure students’ understanding about the listenin material.

– 2nd Quiz:17 students responded. The question was to choose the correct use of the conditional conjunctive particle “-tara” and “-to”. When the students started typing their answers, they were referring to what the first and second students had typed on BBS. Actually those answers “B” were not correct. When about half students typed their erroneous answer “B”, then one student typed the correct answer “A”. Then the last half students typed “A”. It was a simple thing. Most of them didn’t think of answers by themselves. But I thought the student who typed “A” first thought of her answer herself. So I sent a message to praise her courage after the class.

– Attendance check at the end: 21 students responded. It is my fault that I left yesterday’s the-last-quiz unchanged because I have not enough time to check whole through my lengthy power-point slides. However, this quiz was also important to check participation of the students to online class, therefore I asked the students to type their answers.

Teaching: 

– Listening to a conversation between two part time job workers.

– Review and exercise of a little formal negation “-zuni”.

– Exercise of “-ba” and “-nara”

– Listening comprehension of conversation using “-ba” and “-nara”.

– Introduction of a conditional conjunctive particle “-to”.

Homework Assignment:

Since there would be 10 days by the next class, more homework was assigned than usual.

-1 : Small test of the section 13 of the textbook.

-2 : Completing three conversation scripts by filling words.

-3 : Listening and reading aloud the script of two part time job workers.

Issues and Problems:

I had two classes in the day. I didn’t have enough time to prepare for this class, although I started at 3 a.m. and worked by the start of the class at 9 a.m. (in Japan standard time). In order to fill the less teaching material of powerpoint slides, I inserted a listening material from Min’nano Nihongo. That was a conversation in the section 35, which uses the conditional conjunctive particles “-ba” and “-nara”. It, somehow, worked. If I were a seasoned teacher, I would have had enough teaching material that can kill the time. But  I am not. Until I have had enough stock of teaching material, my hard working style through the night will continue.

Date: April 26th on Sunday, 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 55 slides

Numbers of Students: 24 out of 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 17,    Completely Absent : 4,

Shorter signing-in: 87, 86, 69, 15, 12*2 minutes, and the shortest was 49 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25. One of these students was actually recorded as completely absent.

– 1st Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was just to measure whether or not the students understood the listening material.

– 2nd Quiz:19 students responded. The question was to find an erroneous use of conditional conjunctive particle “-nara” from four sentences. “-Nara” cannot be used in a conditional clause if the condition is 100% sure.

– 3rd Quiz: 19 students responded. The question was to select “If” type conditional conjunctive particle that is applicable in a sentence.

– Attendance check at the end: 21 students responded. It is to ask suitabilities of “-nai” or “-zu” for negations to speech or writing.

Teaching: 

– Listening to a conversation between two part time job workers.

– Review and exercise of conditional conjunctive particle “-ba,” and “-nara”. The emphasis was put on the latter, “-nara” with the following three features; (1) Suggestion can be made in the form of “Noun+nara, (clause)”. (2) In the construction of (Preceding conditional clause with “-nara”, conclusion clause), the conclusion clause has modality that expresses speaker’s feeling like intention, guess, request, and so on. (3) If the conditional clause is definitely certain, “-nara” cannot be used.

– Exercise of “-ba” and “-nara”

– Introduction of expression for negation using “-zu-ni” that is a little formal

Homework Assignment:

Any homework was assigned in this time, too. It was noticed to the students that homework during the holidays would be assigned the following day, 27th.

Issues and Problems:

This is a conversation class. So students’ utterances should be promoted. By far I have just tried teaching listening comprehension and making the students do a kind of  rote exercise. In order to prompt the students’ utterance, I decided to give the students a homework in which he/she need to fill his/her own words into many blanks put in the conversation script.

Date: April 24th 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 82 slides

Numbers of Students: 24 out of 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 15,    Completely Absent : 4,

Shorter signing-in: 86, 72, 52, 24*2, 18, 10, 5minutes, and the shortest was 5 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25. One of these students was actually recorded as completely absent.

– 1st Quiz: 19 students responded. The quiz was just to ask the right conjugation of 3rd group verb “Kuru/Kimsu” in Nai-form.

– 2nd Quiz:17 students responded. The question was to choose one sentence that was different from other three sentences. The four were all using “If” type conjunctive particles “-to”, “-ba”, “-tara”, and “-nara”. Of these, only the sentence with “-nara” had different construction that was simply “Noun+nara”.

3rd Only one student responded, no one got the right answer.  In fact the question was too difficult for the students. It was to choose one erroneous sentence among four that were using “If” type conjunctive particles.

– Attendance check at the end: 21 students responded. It is to find a sentence that was erroneously using “-nara” because its conditional clause was too definitely determined to be an assumption.

Teaching: 

– Listening to a conversation between two part time job workers.

– Review and exercise of conditional conjunctive particle “-ba,”

– Introduction of another conditional conjunctive particle “-nara,”,

– Exercise of “-ba” and “-nara”

Homework Assignment:

Any homework was assigned in this time. There was no time to check and evaluate a homework because many classes were scheduled in short period of time before the spring holidays from May 1 to 5th.

Issues and Problems:

The purpose of quiz during class is to check whether or not each student is really listening to the online class. It seems that I might have asked too much difficult questions for the purpose these days. Today’s quiz No.3 was so difficult that no student could get the answer. It is necessary to make those questions appropriate for level of students’ understanding.