hey all,
Despite the nice, unseasonably warm weather yesterday, tonight we are supposed to get snow. We have gotten a little ice before, but not really any snow to speak of. If you've checked out my pictures from Nikko, you'll see lots of snow there, but that is over 3 hours to the North of Tokyo.
Last week, my 3rd year teacher asked me to make some writing practice worksheets for her students. They have a big test coming up, and most of them would probably get 0 points on the writing section. So, I made a bunch of example paragraphs, written in both Japanese and English about topics like my hobbies, favorite sport, family, friends, and favorite subject. Below each example paragraph is a blank section to write about 5 or 6 sentences. But apparently this was a little too complicated. She also wanted some fill-in-the-blank style handy key sentences which the students could essentially copy down, and only change the personally relevant parts of. This, I'd argue, might be OK for someone who has only studied a language for a few months or less: the equivalent of an English phrasebook, good for someone who doesn't really understand the workings of the language they're trying to communicate in, but ultimately doesn't have the time or doesn't care about actually doing so (that is, actually trying to communicate in another language). But these students have studied English for 3 years, surely a little genuine self-expression is something they should be able to do...
Ah but wait, we are in Japan, where showing your true feelings is in most situations something of a no-no, and we are dealing with 3rd year junior high school students who are the least expressive group of people I've ever met, and on top of all that, my school is just not very good. My 2nd year teacher is clearly fed up with his students not studying and not trying hard. But what is the point? They aren't going to get held back: no matter how poorly you do in your classes, if you're a 2nd year student this year, next year you will become a 3rd year student, and thus be taking all 3rd year classes with your 3rd year classmates...despite the fact that you can't tell the difference between n and h, b and d, or hear the difference between v and b (I'm willing to forgive the L/R thing, because every Japanese person I've ever met can't do it), let alone correctly conjugate verbs, place the subject, verb and object in the correct spots, or in general deal with the fact that English grammar and Japanese grammar are in any way different.
Hmm. This started as a neutral post, and somehow became a little rant. Anyway, I'm putting in some more applications for Tokyo positions, but as usual my hopes are not high. I didn't get to study Japanese too much today, so I'm going to take a shower, then study for an hour before going to bed.
Cheers,
