Hi everyone,　皆さん、こんにちは。

My Japanese classes and lessons include the usual kinds of activities that aim to develop speaking, reading, listening, writing and making and performing dialogues. Apart from the usual course book, Genki 1, I used A First Couse in Japanese (by Fudeko Reekie) and Busy People Book 2 for vocabulary concerned with time, days/dates, months and sentences that have those words. Among those, a couple of pages of Japanese for Busy People, Bk 2, pp. 60-61 are one of my favorite. They list the phrases that are commonly spoken in everyday life with the cute/friendly/neat pictures with. And they have a many different verbs used in the sentences. Their contexts are more of adults’ life, but they can be used for school students too. Especially the phrases such as “Uchi de nonbirishimasu.” (=I’ll have relaxing time at home), “Tomodachi to oshaberi o shimasu.” (=I’ll chat with my friend) are my favorite ones. I used many Japanese textbooks in the past (and did research for my academic study, but it seemed some phrases, which are commonly spoken in Japanese people’s daily life, are not in many textbooks unless the linguistic level is high. I think listing the above phrases is desirable.

Also, some of useful pages used in my classes (including tutorials or class that had students who were going to Japan soon) were: a list of many kinds of products at a department store that was on p. 136, A First Course in Japanese. The names of all sorts of products commonly seen at big department stores in Japan are written in Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. They were very useful that is for making sentences.

Similarly, I taught dialogues at a restaurant, in some classes. That is with p. 158 and 159, of the above mentioned book. They are dialogues between a waitress/waiter and customers who wish to order food and drinks and dialogue that is spoken after the meal and for paying the bill at the restaurant. Those will be useful for people who are going to Japan for trips or for living in Japan.

In addition, I taught how to ask or answer about the departure time and arrival time of trains/bullet trains with use of the Jikoku-hyo (Train-timetable of the JTB).

Magazine Jentahad interesting articles/news and I referred to that in classes. One of them was “Enjoying Mt. Fuji”, 27 July, 12, p. 4. It talked about Mt Fuji, , surrounding of it, well known Fuji-Q Highland where I had worked for part time jobs at the skating centre and swimming pool. The above very big amusement park has fascinating facilities and not far from Tokyo.

I taught 4 ~ 5 Japanese songs to most of classes. Most of them are well known children’s songs and they have many plain forms, “many” word of onomatopoeia, sensitivity and emotions for nature or living things etc. And I think singing such songs in relaxing or uplifting music of cd with use of Hiragana based handouts is useful.

Also, I talked about the famous statue of Chuuken-hachiko that is in front of Shibuya Station, Tokyo. It was reported in The Japan Times (17.6.12, P.11). An “amazing” dog that passed away in 1935 (he saw his statue well before his death.) He was a bit similar to the Red Dog, the famous dog in Australia that was portrayed in the movie.

 

Japanese Teacher, Toshiko Jackson

4.9.12