Some Stories About Our Japanese Course 16
Hi everyone, 皆さん、こんにちは。
My Japanese classes and lessons included the usual kinds of activities to develop speaking, reading, listening, writing, constructing and performing dialogues or speech apart from cultural, society-orientated, technology, industry, and travel in Japan.
As recent delightful news, several students, who took my Beginners 1 late last year, informed me their latest news by email. For example, they have been to Japan, greatly enjoyed Japan and could read and understand words that were written in Hiragana etc, and thanked our course (and will come back to our Japanese course this year). Very nice indeed.
In my recent teaching, apart from using the textbook, reference materials for vocab and grammar, video, DVD, flash cards for vocab, pictures and words esp. from Japanese cooking magazines, ads of shops (Harvey Norman or supermarkets to talk about prices of things) etc, I used the method of singing Japanese songs as before. I included some gestures for a few songs. Some adult learners are shy and they tend to hesitate at first, but I try to encourage to do gestures, eg. use of fingers for a song, “My Fingers” and “Cha-Cha-Cha with Toys” (“Omocha no cha, cha, cha”). For teaching a five-year-old girl every Sat., she is very good at singing and performing gestures (almost no fear!) and she enjoys colouring the pictures of the song sheets. Very active learning attitude. Including gestures in singing is very effective and human brains and emotions will be more effectively learning and acquiring the language and culture at the same time while singing. (I mentioned such a thing in my publication in “Australia Language Matter”(ANU) in the past, as one of teaching methods in Japanese and with its cultural concepts.
As for information related to Japanese society (and culture), I showed an article of recent Jenta, which had news of a tuna of an amazing price at Tsukiji Fishmarket, Tokyo, the world’s biggest fish market. Also, articles about Japanese politics, security issue/international relation, i.e dispute with China about the Senkaku Islands, etc. The sources/articles for are:
1. About the newly elected Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe of Liberal Democratic Party, www.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinz%C5%8D_Abe
2. About the Senkaku Island, dispute with China, (1) “China-Japan dispute has wide regional implications: Beijin would be wise to leave the Senkaku Islands alone”, The Australian, editorial, 10.12.12, p. 13. (2) ”Islands must not come between Japan and China: Beijin should take its claim to the ICJ (International Court of Justice), by Masahiro Kohara, Consul General of Japan, Sydney, The Australian, 3.1.13, p. 6 (in the article, Mr Kohara says Japan has spent the post-swar era as a peace-loving nation in line with its peaceful Constitution and has long been the world’s biggest Overseas Development Assistance donor to assist developing nations and in Asia, China was the biggest recipient of Japanese ODA. (3) “Peaceful way out for China and Japan”, by Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, originally article in The Wall Street Journal, The Australian, 7.1.13, p. 6. (4) “Manufacturing dreams won’t take us closer to Asia”, by David Uren (economic editor), 24.1.13, p. 10. It’s about future Australian major industries that should be sustained and strengthened for Australian international trade and its economy, in the article Uren says that til now, Japan was the source of the highest technology in Asia. – All of the above articles and comment seem impressive, sensible (for democratic and peaceful international relationships) and useful.
Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson
5.2.13
Moscow metro – a piece of art hidden underground
In most cities the Metro system is just a means of getting from one tourist attraction to another. The Moscow metro is an exception to this rule, it is a tourist attraction in itself. You will find yourself stopping to marvel at some of Moscow’s amazingly ornately designed stations. Carrying an average of 7million passengers per day, it is also Europe’s busiest Metro system.
The Moscow metro is the main and safest transport system in the Russian capital. It is second only to the metro in Tokyo as far as the volume of traffic is concerned. The metro system consists of 12 lines with an overall length of over 298 km, with 180 stations. The first line opened on 15 May 1935. The passengers were immediately impressed by the fairy-tale beauty of the underground palaces, by the amount of light and the lavish decoration of the stations.
No underground in the world has used a synthesis of arts in its décor. The Moscow metro is a really unique architectural and artistic monument. It was the first one in the world to decorate the stations with statues, frescoes, mosaics. It is hard to believe that all this magnificence was practically hand-made. Nevertheless, the result is amazingly beautiful stations, different from one another. Another uniqueness of the Moscow metro is that the construction of new stations is still based on these ideas and principles.This is how it was planned 75 years ago.
Moscow metro was built not only as public transport. In 1930-s the country was already preparing for a possible war. During the Siege of Moscow, in 1941, metro stations were used as air-raid shelters. Many stations built during the Cold War are very deep and were planned as shelters in the event of nuclear attack. The result of this is that the deepest station of the Moscow metro is “Park Pobedy”, 84 meters, the height of a 28-storey building. It’s one of the deepest stations in the world. At the same metro station one can experience the longest escalator (126 m). Standing at the bottom one cannot see the top.
The differences between English and Russian
Russian is part of the Slavonic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is closely related to other Slav languages such as Polish, Czech and Serbo-Croatian. Russian is spoken as a mother tongue by about 150 million people in Russia and the former republics of the USSR.
English and Russian are quite different in some aspects. In particular the grammar systems show significant variations. English has a fairly fixed word order. Meaning is expressed through the addition of words (for example auxiliaries) and movement of words within limited boundaries. Russian, on the other hand, conveys meaning largely through changes in the composition of words (e.g., by inflections or the addition of prefixes and suffixes). Its word order is very fluid. Because of these differences English-speakers may often find learning Russian word order confusing. Word order in Russian largely depends on what a person is willing to make an emphasis on.
Due to differences in the phonological systems, it is to a certain extent challenging for Russians to acquire native-speaker-like standards of pronunciation and intonation. Russian consists of 5 vowel sounds, with no differentiation between short and long vowels. This contrasts with English which has 12 vowel sounds (5 long, 7 short), plus 8 diphthongs. Possibly the most significant vowel difficulty for Russians is the sound in her / cur. This sound seems to cause especial difficulties in words beginning with /w/, such as were / work / worth. Other vowel problems include a difficulty discriminating between the sounds in sat / set or sit / seat.On the other hand, the main challenge for English speakers in learning Russian represent such letters as: “э”, “й”, “щ” and especially the letter “ы” along with the “soft sign” (ь) and the “hard sign” (ъ). The latter do not designate any sounds but make the preceding consonant sound either softer or harder. Another phonological problem which potentially may cause learning difficulties with English-speakers is a “strong” Spanish-like sound “r”. This is due to the fact that “r” in English is reduced.
Latest Comments