January 16, 2006

Pierced Ear(r)ings

I just wanted to do a little informal poll. How many of you have heard or used the phrase "pierced earing"? If so, what does the word mean to you? I was having a little arguement today with someone about whether it was a real American English word.

ちょっとしたアンケート：英語でpierced earingていう言葉を聞いたことありますか？今日、仕事の先輩に聞かれましたが、他の外人（アメリカ人とオストラリヤ人、二人とも男性）は「聞いた事ない。日本語の英語です」と返事しました。私は聞いた事あると思いますが、日本語の「ピアス」と間違ってるかな？と思ってますので、このアンケートを出しました。

Posted by Emarrific at 02:16 PM | Comments (4)

September 21, 2005

Quiet Day at School (with my camera)

Garbage Recylcery

It was a quiet day and I decided to spend some of my time taking pictures on the way to, around and going away from school. I think the pictures, in addition to showing you some weird parts of my school, may also reveal a little bit about my camera's (not my) zany and inconsistent personality.

Posted by Emarrific at 01:31 AM | Comments (4)

June 08, 2005

Tokyo Recontractor's Conference

Tokyo Recontractor's Conference! (To be updated soon)

Posted by Emarrific at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2005

Teaching with your hands tied behind your back

Imagine trying to teach English under the following circumstances:

  1. 40 students per class
  2. Cannot give homework everyday or in significant amounts (because parents' get mad because it interferes with cram school or the teachers feel the students wouldn't do it)
  3. Lowly motivated students who hate English
  4. English is mandatory from junior high school until the second-to-last or last year of high school
  5. Government mandated textbooks that are difficult to use
  6. Only one week to one month notice about next year's schedule (no time to plan syllabus or develop cirriculum)
  7. Little experience with making course syllabus (other than sequence of page numbers in text books)
  8. Discouraged from using participation points
  9. Can't send kids to the principle or outside disciplinarian if they are being disruptive
  10. Will not see kids more than three times a week for 50 minutes
  11. No significant chance of students failing a grade or failing to graduate even if they do very little work and don't participate in class

This is the fairly impossible teaching situation many public school English teachers face in Japan, unless I am mistaken about some of the conditions above. To me it seems like a pretty challenging, near nigh impossible teaching situation. Only the truly brilliant could devise methods to get around these constraints and actually teach English to these kids. And be a workaholic. But I guess you kind of have to be a workaholic to be a good public school teacher given all the constraints you face in terms of resources and facilities and support. Man!

Posted by Emarrific at 07:35 PM | Comments (2)

April 28, 2005

Planning Lesson Brain Implosion

For the last week I've been trying to come up with a good way to do a lesson about basic sentence structure for an audience of forty first year high school kids of varying ability and motivation that includes some communication element and is interesting and useful and I wouldn't mind doing four times and has all of the USDA daily recommended vitamins. AaaaaaaAAAAaaaH! Today was the deadline for me to send in my lesson plan to the teacher. This morning I was really excited because I came up with what I thought would be an awesome lesson plan and I was happy as a little girl hepped up on sugar. But by the time I finished making the handouts in the afternoon, I HATED IT.

Basically I was going to have the students get in groups and come up with verbs and subjects out of the blue. Then we would do stick them into little silly sentences I made Mad Lib style. But then there is this problem of how to put a little diagram on the page that would refresh their memory about what a subject/verb/noun/adjective is... which is really friggin difficult because I think a lot of Japanese high school kids haven't grasped the concept of what these things are. Thus, even by the third year of high school, they can't put together a simple complete sentence off the top of their head without prompting. (I'm talking the average student, not the high level ones. We don't care about those because we don't see them.) What's more, this activity doesn't involve much talking (unless I try to enforce some kind of NO JAPANESE rule during the activity, which, quite frankly is like trying to enforce a small claims court ruling.) And the whole point of my being there is to increase their speaking abilities and exposure to native speaking. This activity does not do that.

I basically could rip apart the rest of the activities in the same way. Another activity is called "Make a Silly Sentence (You Fool)" and basically it had a subject, to be verb and compliment column which examples. They are supposed to come up with two subjects and compliments and write two original and unique sentences. Then I go around calling random people to say their sentences. Once a sentence has been said, then there is no repeating it. So, this essentially forces the kids to be a little more creative and to start breaking out of the mold of the few set phrases they may or may not know.

Same objectives to this one as the above one.

I had a running dictation activity which is more communicative but has nothing to do with basic sentence structure or enabling students to make a basic sentences unprompted.

Anyways, I just thought too much about things and by the end of the day my head was spinning out of control and I was really frustrated because the simple goal of planning one lesson turned into this complicated puzzle of how to make a whole year plan that would be more focused and accomplish the goals I and the people who hired me think are important. More communcation. More cultural knowledge. More interest in English. More confidence.

My brain is about to implode so I'm going to have a beer now.

Posted by Emarrific at 07:18 PM | Comments (2)

March 29, 2005

Closing Ceremony for One Year Researchers

"And now we will start the closing ceremony," said the department cheif and sat down. A severly proper and frowning old man walked to the front with conducting baton in hand. When the baton came down, the crowd of proper suited people began singing the Japanese national anthem, "Kimigayo", a slow-ponderous-muddled-dark tune where each mora is strung out. The auditorium had a tensed silence over it. Drowsy heat filled the room. At one point, a few employees were talking and were summarily stared down by the emcee and the rest of the crowd. Speeches were made. Certificates were handed out. The department cheif, known for his vitriolic and loud outbursts of anger, nodded off. More speeches were made. Polite clapping followed at the appropriate places in the ceremony. At the appointed time, the department cheif perked up and closed the ceremony with, "And now we will end the closing ceremony." The crowd was dismissed according to rank.

Posted by Emarrific at 05:13 PM | Comments (2)

January 31, 2005

Two Years Beh-beh!

So, the decision has been made. I submitted the forms today to recontract. Another eighteen months of badly written japan-o-entries await. Be afraid.

Posted by Emarrific at 11:33 PM | Comments (1)

January 17, 2005

Decisions

Once, when I was in high school, I remember going down to the natural food store near my house and standing for about 45 minutes in front of the natural foods candy section. I scrutinized the ingredients of each one and argued with myself about whether I should prioritize taste over fat/nutrition, which would mean I should get the heavy tahini layered Halva, or nutrition over taste, which would dictate my buying the not so appetizing looking but healthy green mineral glop bar. I remember being very uncomfortable standing and squatting. The indecision made me almost immobile. The minutes creaped by and the store people gave me funny looks.

Decisions. For over-thinkers such as myself, they are both tantalizing and torturous. They waste my time. They sometimes can cause me to lie down and squeeze little pearl drops out of my eyes. And sometimes, they cause me to stand for 45 minutes in a store, or cause me to get my dinner later than everyone else. Nonetheless, they are captivating.

I have gotten a little better since high school. I don't spend 45 mintues in front of the candy section anymore, although an occasional lapse might cuase me to dally for about 15 minutes. No, I've graduated to bigger decisions such as, "What is my purpose in life?" "What should I do in the future?" "Why am I on earth?" and most importantly,

"Should I recontract for one more year in Japan?"

Yes, it's recontracting time. It's time to decide if I want to spend two years in Japan in a not so high-powered job with scant responsibilities and time requirements, one Pacific ocean removed from my family, friends and boyfriend. I'm pretty sure I will stay, but part of me is bringing up all the if's and but's...

Well, IF you were going to do a career other than teaching, you should be going back now to start working towards that career. (Nevermind that I don't even know what I want my career to be!) BUT if you don't go back, you'll have to suffer through two years of long-distance relationship loneliness! (Nevermind that we can visit each other a lot and keep in good touch.) BUT IF you want to go to school (a big IF), then you should be taking courses in the States and getting ready for that. You can'd do that in Japan. BUT what about a career and a family? Aren't you rapidly getting too old for that? If you want to have a good career or accomplish something in life, shouldn't you be starting that now instead of trapaizing around Japan?

And so forth...

Anyway, I think that I won't get an opportunity like this again where I have so much free time to explore Japan, improve my Japanese, really try my hand at teaching, and get to know my relatives. And, I don't really have a career plan, so there's no rush to get back to something that doesn't exist. Right?

Posted by Emarrific at 03:10 PM | Comments (2)

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:

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

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:

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)