Students like this make my job fun...

I'm cracking up at this kid's writing...

 

'I had a stomachache yesterday. I want to go to toiret. But I can't go to toiret. Because was taking during English class. So I nearly died when I can't go to toiret. I was sad when I can't go to toiret.'

 

'I studied English very hard. But I was solved questions. I have an answer for everything! This is joking. I heard answer. I was very happy!'

Bit of a moan. Sorry.

Things are quiet at school at the moment.  Students are in exams and I'm chilling, 'studying Japanese' (actually I'm read a book.  Motivation I have not, today). 

The only 'work' I've done over the last few days has been answering questions from teachers regarding the accuracy of student answers.  Most of these questions have been pretty genuine, with only the occasional obvious one slipping through.  This has led to much internet research in order to back up my assertions.  The problem with teaching English here is a) they learn American English, which I obviously don't, so sometimes I'm not sure if the grammar is wrong, or just American, and b) often I get questions like 'when using present perfect, why do we need to use 'have + present perfect'?  Which is all Greek to me.  I speak the language, but I never learnt the names of the different bits.  I think I'm doing better than average because I know there are more than three tenses (past, present and future are the only ones I can explain, but I know there ARE more). 

So these questions have necessitated consulting google.  Thank God for google.  Don't know what I would do without it.  In the last few days it has helped me out on the have + present perfect thing, explained when you use 'if I was' vs. 'if I were' and clarified 'do you have a pen?' vs 'have you a pen?' 

Other than that I'm having a bit of a down period at the moment.  I don't think it's culture shock-related, I think it's just a regular old bad patch at work, but I could be wrong.  Currently I'm really struggling to get used to the teaching styles of a couple of teachers who I wasn't working with last year.  Teacher A translates every word I say, while I want to shake her and scream 'these kids have had at least four years of English!  Have a little faith!'  On the other hand, teacher B tells me not to speak slowly for the students, to speak at 'natural speed' ('These kids have had only four years of English!').  I restrained myself from telling her that even she would be screwed if I spoke at regular NZ speed (I struggled to understand Kate when I was home.  Clearly even I struggle with NZ speed now!).  However I made a concious effort to speak a little faster with her and sure enough, a couple of days later she told me she didn't understand what I said because it was too fast. 

Both of these extremes I find a little insulting.  I've spent almost two years over here now and the most important thing about teaching English - or just any communication in English here - is to judge how much your listener is understanding, so you can increase or decrease the difficulty as necessary.  So to have teachers translating everything I say (when I have taught six year olds without any native speaker support), or telling me to speak 'native speed' (when I can see the students eyes glazing when I speak too fast) is frustrating.  They mean well, but they don't know what they are talking about.  Teacher B, being the best at English here, once asked me if I speak differently at school to how I would with native speakers.  It took me a moment to answer, not because I had to think about the question, but because I was a little stunned at being asked.  Of course we do.  The teachers, never mind the students, wouldn't stand a chance if we spoke like we do at home. 

To continue my whine, teacher B also was super annoying before class, with the best of intentions.  I had given out the lesson plan the week before and printed the 320 student copies the day before.  Then the morning of class, she was reading through the lesson plan and had lots of questions and suggestions for the lesson.  Feedback... great.  Feedback when it's too late to easily change the plan... super super annoying.  Next time I will be careful to run the plan past her BEFORE I print off all the handouts etc.  Most of her ideas are good and I apply them to the other classes too.  But... this sounds terrible, but I feel like it's a power struggle in her class.  She is trying to lead the class.  Fair enough, because it's officially her class and she is officially the teacher.  But I'm also trying to lead the class, because it's my lesson plan, I'm used to leading the classes I plan and, dammit, I'm the one that understands the activities I planned!  I had a super super frustrating class when she was trying to help me explain the map activity, but she didn't really understand it herself and was trying to over-explain to the students and we ended up wasting a lot of time, for no discernible benefit.  Retrospectively, it might be because there was no 'correct' or 'model' answer that it's a difficult activity for the teachers to get their heads round.  Because the students have actually done really well with it. 

To go back to teacher A (the one who translates everything), I think I will give it one more week and if her level of translation doesn't change, I need to say something.  I'm not sure if it's better to speak to her quietly on her own, suggesting we up the challenge for the students, or if I should stand up in an English meeting and suggest that we need to up the percentage of English spoken in ALL the English classes and suggest that translations are only given for the students when they ask for them (they all know 'once more' and 'Japanese please' isn't hard!).  Any suggestions on how to do this nicely?  It's driving me insane and I think Jeff will make me sleep on the couch if I complain about her once more... 

Sorry this turned into a big moan.  I guess it's what's at the fore of my thinking at the moment, so it was inevitably going to come out in this blog.  Sorry about that. 

In all fairness (as I protest to Jeff), it's the first time I've felt really negative about my job.  Usually I love my base school and had pretty cruisy teachers.  But I guess I'm used to running the classes and two teachers suddenly putting the 'Assistant' back into 'Assistant Language Teacher' is hurting! 

Oh, last thing.  I've just been told that at the school festival on the 16th the English club can do something if they want.  Actually we should have submitted an application ages ago, apparently.  Only I'm always behind the times (not being able to read the newsletters!) and our older student who was supposed to be our rep at those meetings never actually attends anything, so we had kinda dropped off the face of the earth.  So we now have three weeks to pull something together, when we only meet once a week!  Yikes!  The deal is we will have a space - a classroom I think - to decorate so parents and students wandering around the school can go and have a look.  We will not be there ourselves.  Previous groups have done things like 'how do you say this in English?'  I'm drawing a blank right now.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  I have three girls who I meet with once a week, limited time and limited resources.  What can we do?  All suggestions appreciated! 

Hope you're all having a good week.  I'll try to be more positive on my next update!  It probably doesn't help that I'm trying to study for this test in July and the more I study the more I realise I'll never get my shit together on time!  Not a good feeling!

Anyway, have a good day.  xo

New ways of cleaning

Just a quick note... during cleaning time I had an amusing conversation with a student.  She was using the vacuum cleaner and I told them that vacuum is the American name, but that the English name is hoover.  I told them I always call it a hoover because I can't spell vacuum. 

The student working the vacuum (who kept telling me 'my vacuum, my vacuum!' the whole time.  I think she meant 'I'm vacuuming') said, 'me, me, me can!' and picked up the whiteboard marker.  As I expected, it started with a 'b'.  I was about to correct her when I saw the rest of what she was writing: 'bakyuuuuuuum!!'

I was cracking up as she made me say it with her ('Let's say!  'bakyuuuuuuum!!' 'bakyuuuuuuum!!').  Ah my kids are funny. 

Fukuoka and kanji

Oh my, almost a month since I last updated!  I deserve a slap!  But I won't do it myself, because that would be a bad look in the staffroom... 

There are two main things you all probably need updates on: Fukuoka and Japanese tests.

Background info: for those that don't know the Japanese holiday system (you mean you didn't learn that at achool??), there is a week known as 'Golden Week', where there are three public holidays in the week.  I believe it has been arranged like that so that the Japanese can, by taking off the last couple of days, take a nice long holiday while the weather is condusive to travel.  Although they have a New Year's holiday and a summer break, the first is freezing cold and the second is so hot you risk fainting if you leave your airconditioned apartment.  Hence, Golden Week. 

For this Golden Week, Jeff and I went down to Fukuoka.  Fukukoka is the largest city on Kyushu island, the southernmost island of Japan.  It was our fist time hitting Kyushu and was a very important step - the last of the four islands for us to visit!  We had heard lots of great things about Fukuoka so we were pretty excited.  As a bonus, a woman who was a homestay with my family when I was a wee thing lives in Fukuoka.  Ruriko had recently found me on facebook, so we arranged for Jeff and I to meet up with her and her family when we visited Fukuoka. 

In the interest of not taking forever to tell you about our holiday (because I have a huge stack of student journals next to me, waiting for me to check them!), I'll try to make this pretty brief.  On the downside, there was a misunderstanding wtih the hotel booking.  I believed I was booking a regualar Japanese double bed (always described on English websites as a small double).  I wasn't.  When they said small double, they meant by Japanese standards.  By our standards it was a king single.  Jeff+Charly+king single = feckin' uncomfortable sleep.  Sorry to go on about this, those that have already heard my laments on facebook, but I worked a couple of days, then spent three nights in that fricking uncomfortable bed (waking up to feel where the edge was every time I needed to roll over!) and now I'm working a six day week, so I'm feckin' knackered.  This is, of course, a bad premise to a holiday.  It's always hard to enjoy yourself when you're super tired and just want to lie on the floor/park bench/sand/train seat/basically anywhere and sleep!  As such, we found Fukuoka... not bad... but a little disappointing.  We agreed we had both heard it hyped up a lot by people, so I'm not sure what we were expecting.  As it turned out, it was a city with lots of malls and not much for tourists other than shopping.  Which was an issue as we are trying to save money and didn't want to buy much.  It turns out it is a sister city to Auckland, which seems a pretty fair assesment of it.  I think it would be a lovely place to live, very convienient with everything you could wish for in a city, without the ridiculous size or impersonality (is that a word?) of somewhere like Tokyo.  Actually Fukuoka and Auckland are also similar population-wise.  But... like Auckland, there's not that much to do if you're just a visitor hanging in the city for a couple of days.  Except for eat ramen (in Fukuoka that is, not Auckland).  So we ate ramen.  A lot of it.  It was awesome.  So awesome words can't describe.  When you're tired and hungry from wandering round the city all day, not much can beat a good bowl of pork-broth ramen noodles and a big bottle of beer.  Bliss. 

On the positive side, we caught up with Ruriko.  And it was almost as awesome as Hakata ramen.  :D  Ruriko and her husband both lived in NZ for seven years and their daughter was born there (so she has an NZ passport and is legally a Kiwi, despite being very shy with her English!).  When they couldn't get permenant residency, they moved back to Japan, where they had a son (who we didn't meet because he was at judo practice!).  Ruriko and her family met us at our hotel.  They took us out for lunch, then took us to a famous shrine.  The shrine was very beautiful and all, but the highlight for me was when they showed us how to buy a slip of paper that told our fortune, then they translated for us.  Finally, we got to fold our 'fortunes' into a strip and tie it to the huge bamboo fish frames lining the path.  Ok, that sounds really hard to picture so I'm going to try to load up a picture...

Wow... that was a big fail.  I'll load pictures to facebook and you can go there if you're struggling to picture me with a big paper fish... 

Usually when Jeff and I visit a shrine it's not a very interactive experience, so this was fun.  After the shrine, they took us to look at the beach and Fukuoka Tower.  Fukuoka Tower is a tall, hollow triangle, specifically designed for sightseeing, I assume.  You take the elevator up to the top, where you have 360 degree views of the city and the ocean.  Ruriko pointed out her apartment (sea views!  Nice!) and we took lots of pictures.  The sea there is not great for swimming (we assume.  Because no-one was swimming.), but it was a 'real' beach, with sand and rocks and water.  It was so lovely and peaceful, looking out at the distant islands, that Jeff and I came back the next day. 

So, all in all, Fukuoka was a bit disappointing, but we had a great time with Ruriko and family!  Jeff and I would like to get back to Kyushu to explore the rest of the island.  If we manage it, I would steer clear of Fukuoka this time - unless Ruriko is free to catch up again, because when you're travelling, not much beats hanging out with the locals! :D

Ok, so the second thing you should know is about Japanese tests.  There is this test, called the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test), that is internationally recognised.  On July 1st Jeff and I will sit N5, the easiest level.  For Jeff, it should be pretty straightforward (assuming he can read fast enough to answer all the questions in the relatively short time allowed!), but for me it is a huge challenge - especially with the short amount of time I have until the exam.  However, I'm seeing this as a warm-up.  As Jeff is probably more suited to trying N4, he can do this one first, so that he can use it as preparation for the N4 in December.  For myself, I will attempt it in July with every expectation of failing (bad attitude, I know!), so I can see how I am going on the different sections (I'm very worried about the grammar!) and know what I need to work on more in order to pass the N5 in December.  It's not that I'm not going to give it my best shot this time, but I don't want to be really upset at failing, throwing in the towel and swearing to never study another word of Japanese (not that I would ever throw a frustration tantrum...).  So when you ask me later how I did, if I tell you I got a 45% average, don't commiserate - congratulate me on being only 5% off passing next time!  Yay!  Maybe if I keep reminding myself of this attitude now, I won't cry myself to sleep every night for a week when I get my 'Fail' grade!

Anyway, that's about it.  I should go check some English Journals now.  It's the first batch I've collected and there has been a general misunderstanding - 1 topic, 5 sentences has been generally misunderstood as 5 topics, 1 sentence.  As you can imagine, that's not stimulating reading.  Guess we have to start somewhere!

Hope you are all well xoxoxo