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Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on Apr.24, 2020

Date: April 24th 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 68 slides

Numbers of Students: 26 out of 28

90 minutes attendance: 18 students

Shorter participation: 74, 66, 52, 51, 49, 36, and 2 minutes, and the shortest was 8 seconds.

completely absent: 2 students

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

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

Quiz 1 : 21 students responded. The question was to ask correct stroke order of hiragana “NA”. 19 were right and 2 were wrong.

Quiz 2: 22 responses. The same question was given as class 1836 on April 21st.

Quiz3: 21 students responded. The same question was given as class 1836 on April 21st.

Attendance check at the end of class: the students were asked to submit 5 answers for the questions during the class.

 

Teaching:

The same as composition class for 1836 on Tuesday. However, the quiz of 5 questions resulted in differently. The four questions were to measure how the students understood the poem “Yuugata-no Sanjippun” well. As opposed to my expectation, many errors happened to class 1837 students more than 1836. So far I don’t know the reason.

 

Homework:

It was planned to make the student write the second draft of memorandum about how to use particles “-ga” and “-o”. However, I was too busy to give them instructions for the second drafting, assigning the homework was suspended.

Issues and Problems:

<No time to write them>

Online Teaching for Class 1836 (Composition) on Apr.21, 2020

Date: April 21st 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 67 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

23 students participated for whole 90 minutes.

5 students were recorded for their short attendances: 86, 85*2, 84, 53 minutes

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

– Attendance check by reporting his/her-selves: 27. One student came late recorded 84 minutes participation.

– 1st Quiz: 20 students responded. This was to ask the stroke order of Hiragana “NA”. 19 students answered that they were using the right stroke order (I am suspicious), only one student reported using wrong one honestly.

– 2nd Quiz: 24 students responded immediately. One student posted his answer 7 minutes late, which indicated that he was not with the class at time of quiz No.2. This was to ask the right conjugations of eight verbs that were the form preceding another conjugate words.

– 3rd Quiz; 20 students responded. The question was to check students’ understanding for exceptional use and meaning of I-adjectives “near (chikai)” and “far (to’oi)”.

– Attendance check at the end : 20 students responded. During class another series of quiz was done with 5 questions. Submitting five answers right after the class was asked to the students as an attendance check at the end of the class.

 

Teaching:

1st half:

– The students were warned about plagiarizing from others’ writing to their composition.

– Reading and comprehension of a famous poem “30 minutes in the early evening (Yuugata-no Sanjippun)”. Four questions were asked to the students in order to measure their understanding the poem.

2nd half

– From the textbook; connecting two clauses in order to write a longer sentence by the conjugation form when the word was preceding another conjugation words.

Homework:

1: Rewriting their memo about the uses of particles “-ga” and “-o”.

Issues and Problems:

It is necessary to teach the importance of copyright and proper ways of citation and reproduction. The students are still unaware that it is unacceptable for them to steel someone’s writing and to use it for their compositions.

Spring Flowers in the Garden

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I wanted to make the title “Spring Flowers in my Garden”, but actually it is not my garden. I have just stayed at my parents’ home for these several months. I cannot get back to the country where my university is because of corona virus pandemic. Anyway, spring season never stops and the peach flowers have already gone.

 

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Coming next would be flowers of azalea. Its white bud makes me think of vanilla ice cream.

 

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This is also a white azalea, Doudan-Azalea flowering downward. It seems to contrast to the red leaves in autumn, although we cannot see white flowers in spring and red leaves in autumn at the same time.

 

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This is also “Downward flowers” of silverberry. I planted only one tree of silver-berry (or goumi) in the garden. This means that I will not be able to get any fruit in the near future because there should be another silver-berry but a slightly different kind. In order to get fruits, most of fruit trees needs another tree nearby for pollination.

 

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Buds of an apple tree. For the pollination as I mentioned for silver-berry, I planted two apple trees in one place. They were Kougyoku and Tsugaru. This photo was probably of Kougyoku’s.

 

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Here is another apple’s flower that has already opened. This is Alpus-Otome.

 

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This is flowers of gooseberry. Maybe it is safe to say that the fruits look more beautiful than the flowers. If I can take a photo of gooseberry fruit, I would like to put it on this blog.

 

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Actually this photo and the below were taken two weeks ago.

 

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Yes, this is peach flowers two weeks ago. I am not sure if I will be able to eat sweet peaches from this tree in summer because I am just an amateur about fruit tree growing.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on Apr.20, 2020

Date: April 20th 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 81 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 20,    Completely Absent : 3,

Shorter signing-in: 71, 41, 31, 19, 7 minutes.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25. One out of 25 was recorded as completely absent. One student did not report the attendance by him?herself but was recorded with 41 minutes attendance. Probably the student came late and left early.

– 1st Questionnaire: 19 students responded. This was not a question but a questionnaire. The students were asked to answer which of the four summer festivals in Japan they want to come and see. The festivals were Nebuta in Aomori, Tanabara in Sendai, Bon-Odori in anywhere, and Fireworks in everywhere. Most of the students prefer fireworks.

– 2nd Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was to find a different type of conjunctive particle out of five sentences. Four sentences used “If” type conjunctive particles and only one sentence used “Even-if” type conjunctive particle. The students were asked to find “Even-if” type. All the 17 answers were correct.

– 3rd Quiz: 20 students responded. The quiz was to ask right connections between negative “-nai” and conditional conjunctive particle “-ba”. All the answers were correct.

Attendance check at the end: 20 students responded. This is a quiz to ask the right conjugation of verb ‘iku/ikimasu” for conditional form.

Teaching: 

– Listening to conversation between part time job workers.

– Review on hearsay expressions using “-souda”, “-rashii”. “He/she says”, and “It is said that”

– Feedback about a Test result; A small test was given to students on April 13. The result was explained to the students for further understanding about differences between hearsay and guessing

– Introduction of the conditional conjunctive particle “-ba” and verb conjugations for conditional form

Homework Assignment:  Students were asked to type verb conjugations to conditional forms.There were 30 verbs but 60 answers were required. 30 were conditional forms directly obtained from dictionary forms. 30 were also conditional forms but obtained from potential forms.

Issues and Problems:

I am not sure whether it is standardized teaching or not as to conditional forms that are obtained from potential forms. It might bring a severe confusion to students because it makes students think as if 5-dan conjugation verb were also conjugated to have -reba. Reba ending is only for 1-dan conjugation verbs, Kuru, and Suru (actually Ra-row 5-dan verbs, too). What I thought was simple. It is useful to know conditional forms coming from potential forms because Japanese use very often that kind of conditional forms in conversation.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on Apr.17, 2020

Date: April 17th 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 63 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 16,    Completely Absent : 5,

Shorter signing-in: 82, 52, 42, 41, 31, 5minutes, and the shortest was 56 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 22.

– 1st Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was to talk about several usages of particle “-to”. Selections are as follows: (A) “-to” for Noun1 and Noun2, (B) “-to” for someone whom you do something together with, (C) “-to” for comparison and/or classification, (D) “-to” follows what he/she thought and/or said, and conjunctive particle “-to” for conditioning. This quiz was to make the students choose D.

– 2nd Quiz: 16 students responded. The quiz was not a question but a kind of questionnaire. Students were asked to choose a hearsay from three choices. This was a kind of tips on business.

– 3rd Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was to distinguish hearsay or guessing. Probably it was a little grammatical to ask the students at this time. Only two students got correct answers.

– Attendance check at the end: 20 students responded. A correct verb conjugation to fit hearsay “-souda” was asked.

Teaching: 

– Review of conversation using the auxiliary verb “-souda” for hearsay.

– Introduction of the expression “-to itte iru” for “he/she says that -”

– Introduction of the expression “-to iwarete iru” for “it is said that -”

– Introduction of the expression “-ni mieru” for “it seems that – ”

Homework Assignment:

No document need to be submitted this time. The students were asked (1) to do self-check of the small test that was a homework of last class, and (2) to listen to a mp3 that was a conversation between two part time job workers with one being new to the job.

Issues and Problems:

Today’s new expressions were “he/she said that”, “it is said that”, and “it seems that” (in Japanese!). It seems that they can be alternatives for auxiliary verbs “-youda” and “-souda”. In a strict sense, I don’t think they are identical to “youda” and “souda” in the meaning and functions. But in order for the students to do conversation without stopping it, I would like to recommend using those a little bit lengthy but easy and clear  expressions. If you use “youda” and /or “souda”, a difference of just a one letter or two changes the meaning of whole sentence; guessing or hearsay.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on April.17, 2020

Date: April 10th 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 82 slides

Numbers of Students: 27 out of 28

90 minutes attendance: 18 students

Shorter participation: 68, 41, 31, 29, 5, 5, 3, and 3 minutes, and the shortest was 3 seconds.

completely absence: 1 student

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check: 28. But one student were recorded as “Completely Absent” on the system.

Quiz 1 : 17 students responded. The question was to find an incorrect sentence from six sentences that had different words order. Actually there was no incorrect sentences, all the six sentences were correct. This question aimed at showing that there is a flexibility in words order in Japanese thanks to particles that indicate the function of a word.

Quiz 2: No student could make his/her response. Probably it was too difficult. I did not ask this question to class 1836 for the same reason. Everything was in Japanese, but let me write in English:

Question: which of A or B is described in the the following statement?

It is not clear if Ms.Hasegawa and Ms.Saito were confused each other, or these two were confused with other people.

A: I mistakenly thought Ms. Saito as Ms.Hasegawa.

B: I confused Ms.Hasegawa and Ms Saito.

This question was to show the verb “Machigaeru” needs not only a word with “-o” but also a word with “-to” to make a sentence have sufficient information.

Quiz3: 20 students responded. The question was to choose sentences that were more suitable to writing.

Teaching:

The same as composition class for 1836 on Tuesday. The first half was to give the students a feedback about the results of the last week’s homework assignment. It was a kind of test about particles. As I predicted, there were so many error caused by the influence of ‘”Wa-ga construction”.

The Second half was teaching using the textbook. It consisted review of last week and this week’s topic. The former was connecting two phrases to make a longer sentence, the latter was expressions that were more suitable for writing.

Homework:

1: Writing a composition about how to use the particle “-ga” and “-o”.

2: Writing sentences that a student made errors with for the last week’s homework.

Issues and Problems:

A huge problem with over generalization of Wa-ga Construction.

Online Teaching for Class 1836 (Composition) on Apr.14, 2020

Date: April 14th 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 82 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

22 students participated for whole 90 minutes.

5 students were recorded for their short attendances: 86, 81, 75, 36, 18minutes

1 students was completely absent.

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

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

– 1st Quiz: 18 students responded.

– 2nd Quiz: I decided not to do this because time was limited and it is a too difficult question.

– 3rd Quiz; 20 students responded. The question was to choose three sentences that are more suitable to writing style out of six.

– Attendance check at the end : 23 students responded. The question was to ask the functions of each particles; -wa, -ga, -o, -ni

Teaching:

1st half:

– Answers and review for quiz with 5 questions in the last class

– Importance of particles in Japanese

2nd half

– Review for the last class about connecting short sentences to make longer sentences.

– Connecting two clauses in order to write a longer sentence.

Homework:

1: Writing about usages of particles “-ga” and “-o”.

2: Rewriting sentences that had errors in last week’s homework.

Issues and Problems:

They will never learn hoe to use the particle “-o”. I realized that it is useless to teach them the importance of the particle “-o” which is a marker of an object that receives action of transitive verb. So I decided to make the students write their explanations about “-o”. For the sake of comparison, I thought it would be better to make them write about also the particle “-ga”.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on Apr.13, 2020

Date: April 13th 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 63 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 16,    Completely Absent : 4,

Shorter signing-in: 85, 84, 84, 73, 37, 23, 11 minutes, and the shortest was 55 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 26, but three students were recorded as completely absent

– 1st Quiz: 14 students responded. The quiz was to ask right connections between a Na-adjective and auxiliary verb “-rashii”.

– 2nd Quiz: 18 students responded. The quiz was to tell the difference of hearsay “souda” and guessing “souda”.

– 3rd Quiz: 16 students responded. The quiz was to ask right connections to auxiliary verb “rashii”. One is a negative verb predicate and the other is a  noun.

– Attendance check at the end: 14 students responded. This is a quiz to get to know similarities between hearsay and “It is said that” and between guessing and “I think that”. Of course they are in Japanese.

Teaching: 

– Review of conversation using the auxiliary verb “-rashii” for guess.

– Introduction of the auxiliary verb “-souda” for hearsay

Homework Assignment: Short test of one sheet of A4 paper to ask usage types of “youda”, connections of “rashii”, and miscellanious questions about sentences u4sing auxiliary verbs.

Issues and Problems:

Due to the time limitation, I couldn’t teach “he/she says that” which can be a substitute of hearsay. Five PPT slides were left unused.

Railway Geeks’ Holy Place, JR Niitsu Sation

I had uploaded some pictures for these several weeks. They were the photographs that I used as background picture on PPT slides of my online teaching. But now I am reluctant to upload some of my best pictures here. Maybe I am a stingy guy, but let me say, this blog is so unpopular that no one comes. I don’t have time to waste here. I am busy now because of online teaching. I have to prepare for 70 slides for 90 minutes class. And I have to teach such classes six times a week that need five preparations (two classes are almost identical). I have to work through the night three times a week. I am exhausted.

 

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It seems that  I will not be able to get back to a country where my university is, in near future. So I applied to citizenship in Niigata-city. I went to Niitsu where city ward office is.

 

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Only a railway geek would be interested in this kind of photographs. Niitsu is a town of railway. Think it as letter of “K”. The vertical line is Shin’etsu line of railway. Stroke of upper right is Uestu line and the lower right is Ban’etsu line. Niitsu is the town these railway lines are connected. The town had been developed with railway in the past. But a huge motorization changed everything. The central part of Niitsu has been just going down over time. Still this is a town of railway, so you can see many railway geeks hanging a big and long camera lens in JR Niitsu station.

 

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On the platform bench, they are occupying two of three seats.

 

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Forty some years ago, my family went to Niitsu station. That was the last day of steam locomotives. As a young boy, anything moving was fun to me. But my dad once said that that day, my older sister got angry very much. She didn’t have any interest in such a black thing spewing dark smoke running and stopping. It was a thing almost a half century ago.

 

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Time never stops. Spring has come after the winter as usual. This photo was taken not in Niitsu but in Niigata that is the prefecture capital. I had to go to a bank in Niigata for some cumbersome processes of national pension payment. Anyway, people are now having a different spring time all over this planet.

Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Conversation) on Apr.10, 2020

Date: April 10th 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 66 slides

Numbers of Students: 28

Fully attendant for 90min : 16,    Completely Absent : 5,

Shorter signing-in: 81, 80, 64, 44, 6, 2 minutes, and the shortest was 11 seconds.

Responses onto the BBS:

– Attendance check by a student his/herself: 25, but two students were recorded as completely absent

– 1st Quiz: 19 students responded. The quiz was to ask right connections between words and auxiliary verbs “-youda” and “-rashii”.

– 2nd Quiz: 17 students responded. The quiz was to ask a little difference of nuance between auxiliary verbs “-youda” and “-rashii”.

– Attendance check at the end: 16 students responded. This is also a quiz to ask differences among hearsay, guess based on hearsay, and guess by him/hersalf.

Teaching: 

– Review of conversation using of the auxiliary verb “-youda” for guess.

– Introduction of the auxiliary verb “-rashii”

– Review of guessing using “-deshou”. There was not enough time for practicing for this. Some slides were skipped.

Homework Assignment: Completing conversation using guessing “-deshou”

Issues and Problems:

So many. But let me write them when I have time.