emarrific

December 20, 2004

Merry English-mas and a happy new year!

Happy holidays to all my friends and family! Do you like the holiday flavor of the site? (I admit it's a bit garish with all the red, green and Santa pictures.)

As usual, my grand plan to execute a spectacular Christmas lesson (as described in the November 28 entry) that would leave my students stunned with novel English and Christmas knowledge did not live up to expectations. Such is the way of my plans.

My plan, in it's original state, was to bring a portable Christmas English fair with me to each English class. I dreamed up six different stations: write your own Christmas/Hanukah/etc. card, watch a X'mas movie clip and fill in the blanks in the dialogue, learn a X'mas song, do a X'mas dialogue with me, X'mas quiz and X'mas around the world display and puzzle.

I only ended up doing the fair format once. It was somewhat of a bust because there was too many stations to set up, too many logistics (half of which I didn't discover until the day of) and too little time in the class period for students to "discover English" on their own and gain a sense of "ownership" over it. Plus, I failed to manage my time properly before hand and did not prepare properly for all the stations.

An important thing I discovered: If you want to set up an English fair of CHOICE, you must have provide more seats than there are students. This way students can move to different stations even if other students haven't finished yet.

For instance, many of the students who started off in the "Have an English dialogue with the native English speaker (me)" station got stuck there because the people at the other stations weren't budging for various reasons.

Kids got stuck at the "Christmas Story" movie station because the volume on my computer wasn't loud enough. Therefore, the students had to take turns pressing their ears into my computer in order to hear the movie. (Before you balk, realize that there is no portable TV unit in that school.) Thus, the students took a long time at that station.

The X'mas quiz students were stuck there because they couldn't understand the questions. The Japanese English teacher had to take a lot of time explaining the questions. I tried really hard to dumb the questions down, but it was STILL too hard. I need to take a course in creating simple questions that Japanese students understand! (Or a drawing course, he he.)

The X'mas card kids got stuck there because most Japanese high school kids are painfully anal when it comes to lettering and drawing. They therefore spent almost all of the 50 minute period on writing a X'mas card such as this:

Dear Santa,

Mery クリスマス!
I want MDプレーヤ. I like Miney mous.
Happy New Year!

From,
Tamiko
Class 3H #78

(insert elaborate picture of Miney mous.)

They did this even with a clear example such as this:

Dear Santa,

Merry Christmas!
(What is your name?) My name is _________.
(How old are you?) I am ___________.
(What do you want?) I want __________.
Happy New Year!

Sincerely,
(Your Name)
(Class) (Number)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha bwa ha bwa bwaaaaaaa! Why?!!!!? What am I doing wrong? What can I do better? Why can't I get this English teaching thing right???

Anyway, after the first English "fair", I changed the format to the following (on request from the teacher and also of my own initiative):

Start with a very, very simple fill-in the blank Christmas song. I chose "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" because most kids knew it and it was relatively simple and short. After playing the song four times and dancing about crazily, I had students put the answers up on the board. After that, I went over the answers and the meaning of the song, getting as much input from students as possible with the help of (some of) the Japanese English teachers. Finally, we sang it together. I had a varied response to the command to SING with ENERGY! Some classes were into it, and some were like an energy black hole.

Then, the last part of the class was entirely devoted to students writing NICE X'mas cards to each other. I gave them a sample letter and sample NICE sentences. It looked like this:

Dear ________,

Merry Christmas!
I think you are so ___________. (pretty, handsome, smart, funny, funky...)
I think you are good at _________. (cooking, drawing, baseball, soccer, English...)
Happy New Year!

Sincerely,
(your name)

The students were really noisy when they picked the names and it took ten minutes to calm them down. But, they really seemed to enjoy writing cards for their classmates: real people who they know. Yep. Makes sense. I should remember this!

Overall I think the second plan worked because it made better use of the 50 minute period, the limitations of my high schools' facilities and the limitations of my students' ability level. But I would love to hear your criticisms, witticisms, comments, edits and ideas. Oh yeah, feel free to laugh at me as well... it'll make you feel satisfied, like when you kick a dying dog on the ground.

Posted by Emarrific at 09:37 PM | Comments (3)

December 10, 2004

The Mask of Zorro: Hanibal Lector Talks About Charm

Ah, the beauty of movie night. Get a bunch of crazy foreigners (and one Japanese English teacher) together, eat a bunch of burritos and make smart cracks at "The Mask of Zorro". There's nothing better I tell you! Some special moments in the movie include:

Don Diego de la Vega: Do you know how to use that thing?
Alejandro Murrieta: Yes! The pointy end goes into the other man.
(everyone gaffaws)

Don Diego: You have passion, Alejandro, and your skill is growing. But to enter Montero's world, I must give you something which is completely beyond yor reach.
Alejandro: Ah, yes? And what is that?
Don Diego: Charm (he puts his arms up and does a twirling gesture with the spoon he is holding.)

Alejandro: I miss my brother, sir.
Don Diego: Your brother is dead! We lose the ones we love; we cannot change it. Put it aside.
Alejandro: How? How can I do what is needed, when all I feel is... hate.
Don Diego: You hide it. [Holds up black leather thing.] With this.
(N): A black thong?

There are more special moments, but it would take a lifetime to unmask them. (Get it?!! Knee slap!)

Posted by Emarrific at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2004

Enoshima Kitties!

Recently I went to Enoshima and was pleasantly surprised by all the kitties inhabiting the island. Take a look at my photo album here! Emarrific's photo albums

Posted by Emarrific at 08:35 AM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2004

Juxtapositional Linquizzical Prepositional Torture

Today, it was my greatest please to challenge/vainly attempt the highest level (level one) of the JLPT, otherwise known as the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It was actually a bit of a stretch to imagine passing this test when I signed up three months ago, but I thought the challenge would be fun. Then, about 3 weeks ago, I took my first practice test and was so demoralized by the result that I stopped studying. I know, this was a terribly silly time to take the practice test (I should've taken one at the beginning of study and then regularly thereafter) but you know what they say... the past is 20/20 but the future is a bit murky.

The test is divided into three sections. I have listed them below with my thoughts on each:

1. Kanji and Vocabulary

I am so laughably bad at this section. I probably would just barely pass this section in the level below- level two. For some reason the kanji and vocabulary just won't stick in my head! In any case, I have devised a master plan to deal with this embarrassing situation. I will read a newspaper everyday, a magazine a week, and a book a month. It sounds good on paper, although reading for three hours a day seems a bit ambitious. But I like to think BIG BIG BIG! I don't settle for mediocre dreams. I like BIG DREAMS and BIG FAILURES!

Moving on....

2. Listening Comprehension

This section is so easy, I blush to mention it. It's like the developing country of the JLPT sections in terms of difficulty. My theory is that the Japanese people who made this test learned foreign languages using the grammar-translation method, a method which left them unable to understand language in real-time. As a result, maybe they figured learners of Japanese would also have learned in the same way, which would explain the draconian kanji, vocab, reading and grammar sections in juxtaposition with the comparatively easy listening comprehension section.

Anyways, I never have to study for this section. It will be the section which will pull my score out of the depths of the 40th percentile range.

3. Reading comprehension and grammar

On the practice test, the reading passages were so hard that I had to sit down with a dictionary and grammar book and puzzle together the meaning of these passages over a span of several hours. However, on this year's test, the reading comprehension featured words and kanji that I know, which is amazing, considering how few I know! So, there is a better than 5% chance that I could pass.

The grammar section also was not as bad as the practice test, but still, I had to do a lot of educated and not-so-educated guessing.

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I will find out the results in February. If I pass, it will be a sort of rite of passage... that I have finally come to a point where I have mastered Japanese to a reasonable degree. For years I have thought that if I passed the JLPT level one, I would have arrived. Or so I thought. There is some controversy in my mind about whether this test really signifies a high degree of fluency in the language. It does signify a high fluency in recognizing kanji, vocabulary, grammar and, to some extent, reading patterns. It doesn't say much about your listening comprehension level. Nor does it test your ability to actually produce language. I don't ever have to utter a sentence or write anything. This is a very important part of language usage, and I don't know if I can say that I am truly a master until I can do these things to a reasonable extent.

Still, if I do pass by some insane fluke, I will be happy to move on to the ultimate test, the test which will show that I can be a functional *producer* of the Japanese language. Then and only then, will I (possibly) be satisfied. Any suggestions on what should constitute this test or tests would be welcome. :D

Posted by Emarrific at 11:30 PM | Comments (2)