My Japanese classes/lessons included practices to develop skills of speaking, reading, listening, writing (including weekly essays on a variety of topics for Intermediate 1), interacting and constructing/performing students’ own dialogues by pairs/groups or by oneself. The learning includes the language and cultural skills used in travelling in Japan and general understanding on Japanese culture. Speaking practice sometimes used the pictures, concepts or topics from the brochures of the Japan National Tourism Organizations, Japanese newspapers, its ads, Nichigo Press, Daily Telegraph etc.

My previous Beginners 2 finished early this month. Then I began teaching a new group of Beginners 1 form the middle of this month. They have been using Training Material in Japanese of SLS and I have been using some other supplementary handouts, including the names of a family members, names of many things used in people’s daily life and verbs commonly used in daily life. The class (about 10 people) consists of people who want to go to Japan soon (esp. at its cherry blossom time!) and currently they are very keen (+ some interesting questions given to me in each lesson).

Also, I taught a university student who is visiting Japan (he might be there now) for about 10 days. He had an intensive tutorials of about 10 lessons. We used the above mentioned Material, some handouts for time telling, speaking about trains departures/arrivals with page from the Japan Railway, well known timetable “Jikoku-hyoo”, which you will see at any station of the above in Japan. Also, I talked about Japanese onsen, public baths, Royal Family, significance of etiquette/mannerism, techniques of learning Japanese (that I had heard from ones who had been very successful learners of Japanese among the Australians and who I had interviewed in the past for my postgraduate studies), Mt Fuji and large amusement park nearby, major attractions in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara, etc. Also, I taught reading of basic Hiragana with the use of the Romaji and Hiragana syllable based chart. The above student was very keen and perceptive. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching and he seems having enjoyed my lesson too! (I received a very heart-warming thanking card at the end of the series of the lessons!)

My other students of tutorials, who are busy professionals, began coming to my weekly lessons as before. They are interested in taking the JLPT apart from learning general Japanese language. One of them brought the preparatory book of N5 last week and we began using that book for the lessons.

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

27.1.16