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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Thursday, January 16, 2003 |
 What I did today
Today, I...
- Drove to Izumi to buy the card, string, etc., for the kite-making event on Saturday;
- Found that Izumi wasn't open;
- Drove back from Izumi all the way along the top of the mountains;
- Went to Kirikushi Elementary School;
- Taught the second of the Elementary English classes in Koyo Community Centre;
- Started working with LiveTopics, to get a table of contents for the Breakfast Show.
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Went to Kirikushi Elementary School this afternoon. My first lesson was with the first-years, who as ever were lively and cute. We played janken (Rock, Scissors, Paper) in English, and everyone had a great time. The teacher- as ever- had had no requests for the lesson, so I'd decided upon this lesson because the first year teacher in Etajima had suggested it for her class.
The second lesson was with the fourth-years, and, following the teacher's request for a song, we did 'London Bridge', with the game and the human tug-of-war at the end. This is never long enough for a whole lesson, though, so afterwards we played janken in English. The janken went better than the song; it always seems that the teachers like the idea of doing songs more than the children do...
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 J-List
Top women searched for on Google in Japan in 2002
- Otoha
- Yui Ichikawa
- Haruka Igawa
- Miho Yoshioka
- Eiko Koike
- Yuka
- Miho Kitajima
- Kyoko Hasegawa
- Kasumi Nakane
- Misaki Ito
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 Tonight was the second of my Elementary English lessons in Koyo Community Centre. Again, everyone seemed fairly eager and enthusiastic, and the lesson went quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I only had time to do half of what I'd planned. Part of the reason for this was the problem of 'countable'/'non-countable' nouns in English. One person said 'I like dog' instead of 'I like dogs', and so I explained that some nouns in English were countable, and some weren't, which was important when using plurals. However, about half of the group couldn't comprehend the concept of 'countable'/'non-countable' at all, and then were completely incapable of applying the general rules I gave to decide whether things they wanted to talk about were countable or not. I had people asking about books, scarves, even walls!
I think that it really is the case that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The people who come to this course generally aren't complete beginners, which means that firstly that tend not to be satisfied with the patterns I give them, but ask about other patterns they've seen or heard. The thing is that I've chosen the patterns I use as the most common, the simplest, or the most applicable in various situations, and so when people ask about other examples it's not just a question of explaining the example itself, but also when it can and can't be used, the different nuances, etc. Asking questions, of course, isn't a bad thing, but the people who ask don't have enough knowledge to be able to appreciate the differences between my examples and the ones they've brought up themselves, which means that they ask more and more specific questions to try and pins down the precise usage rules for 'their' sentence; in this way we can waste thirty minutes easily, while everyone else sits around doing nothing.
Still, it wasn't a bad ninety minutes.
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Another entry from the sake book. Alcohol and Health: U
Underage: Underage drinking is prohibited because it dose (sic) harm to youngsters' growth.
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