Final Thoughts

I enjoyed doing this project. I enjoyed recording and analyzing my own learning experience. I noticed many different aspects and points of views found in learning and teaching.

As a learner, I am happy with my progress. I realized that my weakness were NOT BEING ABLE: to learn on my own, to study on my own, and to assess my own progress. However, when there was no pressure of being graded, I was able to truthfully documenting my learning process.

I liked my own insights. I felt some of the ideas were quite unique given the backgrounds I had. I told the story of learning Japanese from a fluent Mandarin Chinese and English speaker's point of view. I analyzed the process from a cognitive scientist and linguistic point of view. I immersed in learning as a learner while occasionally approached and considered about learning as a teacher.

I witnessed the importance of have a complete and thorough lesson plan, as well as the effectiveness of drilling. I came across many aspects of feedback and multiple intelligence. These were just terms of ideas that we learned in class, but now I had a chance to get closer to them as a learner.

I also thought about motivations. It was such a magical and obscure concept. I thought about it over and over again. It was closely linked to my frustrations, that was my conclusion so far. However the process of discovery would not stop here. I want to keep thinking and search for better ways to motivate students.

In Chinese proverb, there was a story about an old man who lost a horse and then found two horses back. When he suffered from the loss, people felt sorry for him, but he told people not to, because loss might be a good thing. When the horse came back to him with another horse, people congratulated him for gaining, but he said it could be a bad thing. The story continued with his son riding on the new horse and broke a leg. In short, my point was just that I suffered from not having one Japanese teacher because my friend couldn't manage a time for me. However, I had unexpected gaining too. I was able to experience and compared different tutor/teaching style, as well as self-directed learning (term found from Oxford Brookes University's website).

I never considered myself as a studious student. I thought I would not be an autonomous learner (wiki) and that I was handicapped in autonomous learning. However, my goal in education is to help students become autonomous learners. Deep in my heart I've always had doubt in myself, for it seemed to be such an oxymoron, how can I be a dependent student myself yet want to teach students to be independent learners? Doing this project helped me understand more my strengths and weaknesses. It also helped me to see what I lack to become an autonomous learner. I felt that I may be one step closer to it now.

Log

Inspired By

Over the time of creating this journal, I thought of some games I might be able to use in the future.

I.
Game: Truth and Lies

Good for: Culture Lesson

Topic Example: Togei Kyoshitsu (Pottery Class)

Pre-game assignment:

Students research on their own three things about topic, given the information that they will test another team their knowledge on these things they researched.

Procedure:

Students will be separated into two teams. Team A will come up with three things about topic, Togei, and two of these things will be lies; only one will be fact. Team B will need to guess which one thing is the truth.

Then teams will rotate. Team B will come up with three things, and team A will guess.

II.
Activity: Two Rotating Circles

Good for: warm-up, sharing information and bridging knowledge

Topic Example: Togei Kyoshitsu (Pottery Class)

Procedure:

Students will form two concentric circles. 

Lesson 4

Lesson Four with Kayoko at Financier
Jan.11, 2011

Kayoko sensai (teacher) asked me whether I’ve learned about the week days, because if I haven’t then she can teach me that since she has already prepared that lesson for her class. I haven't got a chance to master the "conversation at a restaurant" that I envisioned in mind as the project was first proposed, but I thought I should learn what she had already prepared so that I did not create extra work for her.

This time the location was at a dessert place. We each had a dessert first before we started. 

We covered the 7 days of the week, how to ask "what day is today/tomorrow/the day after tomorrow?", and negation, such as "Today is not Sunday."

Materials

Kayoko brought her big and heavy laptop, which provided critical resources for today's lesson. Because of the laptop, we were able to watch a slide show, some youtube videos that she saved before.

This reminded me of a Chinese saying, "to do a good job, it is essential to have the tools sharpened (well-prepared)," and that was exactly what Kayoko did.

Learning Strategy

The days of the week are named after elements (except the sun and the moon), Kayoko told me. However, I think a more precise description would be the days of the week are named after planets plus the sun and the moon. Nevertheless, in Chinese (and Japanese I assume) the planets in our galaxy are named after the elements.
Monday = Getsu yoobi (Moon) (Getsu = moon)
Tuesday = Ka yoobi (Fire/Mars)
Wednesday = Sui yoobi (Water/Mercury)
Thursday = Moku yoobi (Wood / Jupiter)
Friday = Kin yoobi (Gold / Venus)
Saturday = Do yoobi (Soil / Saturn)
Sunday = Nichi yoobi (Sun / Sun)

How do you remember the seven days?
After we watched the slides Kayoko prepared, she told me to chant "Getsu, Ka, Sui, Moku, Kin, Do, Nichi" in a rhythm. She said that was how Japanese children were taught. However, I told her to memorize the first word in sequence only helped me with the sounds but not the meanings. In fact, I think it would be too slow to chant the words and count which one is which.

I told her how I memorized the meaning. It was not that difficult for me since I've already know all the Kanji characters. It was like playing a matching game. I just had to match the correct element/planet to the corresponding day.

I used a naturalistic approach. I did not try to memorize any of it, but I noticed how Wednesday really stood out because the fonts were blue (like water) on the slides. I read a book called " Wednesday is Blue (in Chinese)," before. (The book is translated from English; it's original name is "Born on a Blue Day"). Wednesday is about the middle of the week. So I just remembered the middle is blue, is water, and is Wednesday.

The rest just followed. Monday was moon because the slide was yellow.
Tuesday was fire because the slide was red.
Thursday was wood, because wood comes slow.
Friday was hard to remember because it was gold, yet it was hard to associate gold with Friday. I guess I could make up a connection between gold and TGIF: both makes people excited.
Saturday was soil. Saturday was kind of outdoor, hence soil fitted the image.
Sunday had the "Sun." Self-explanatory and easy.

That was how I remembered the seven days of the week. Kayoko sensei (teacher) complimented me, said I had good strategy.

Review / Practice On My Own

Repetition, Drilling, Large amount of input/output

During Lesson 3, Kayoko would teach me the material once, practice several times, and then started to show me ways to make sentences or questions with it. She would have me practice the material over and over again. Then she would change it a little bit, and have me practice over and over again. I had been a quick learner and did not consider there was the need for such repetition. However, when I tried to review the materials on my own, I really appreciated the effect it had. It made reviewing much easier. Because of the drilling we had during the session for days of the month (we watched the video twice, and Kayoko went over with me several times too), I was able to recite the rap from the youtube video without watching it again on my own!

Metacognitive Learning: Making Connection between Languages

Articulation : Japanese vs Cantonese 

I was practicing the irregular days of the month rap, and my boyfriend told me that he found 4,Yokka, and 8, Yooka sounded very similar. He could not distinguish them. 

I totally did not notice how similar Yokka and Yooka were last time when I had the class (Lesson3).

That day I basically pronounced the two words by the sounds and rhythm I remembered from the rap (video). 

A few days later, I suddenly made a connection of the way 4 was spelled (in Romaji) "Yokka" to Cantonese. I know that in Cantonese, there are a lot of "k" sound and "t" sound at the end of a syllable, such as in the name of a famous movie star, Chow Yun Fat. We don't really pronounce that "t" but only form our mouths into the position of pronouncing "t". 

I then realized that maybe it's not "Yo-kka" but "Yok-ka," and that was why Kayoko kept telling me there needed to be a pause between the "yok" and the "ka."

It was so complicated, but I was glad I figured it out. However, I still felt that I could not distinguish between yokka and yooka. To me I felt that the "yoo" sound in yooka, demostrate a fourth-tone quality. That was how I remembered it although I did not know whether my pronunciation had been correct or not.

Visual Aids - Rap on Youtube

 Japanese Rap for Days of the Month (Irregular ones only)

I watched this in my 3rd Japanese Lesson. This one is...really something. Several strength it exhibited were:

1. It's a powerful visual aid. The fact that it is created by non-native Japanese speaker who are speaking fluent Japanese was very inspiring and motivating.
   
   
2. It's also a very good conversation-generator. We were chit-chatting about how creepy the girl was, how good their Japanese was, how perfect the rhythm for days of the month was...etc.
   
   
3. It creates a fun atmosphere in the classroom. It relaxes the teacher and students, and helps build the bonds between teachers and students.
   
   
4. It helps the students to drill and memorize the irregular days of the month.
   
   
5. It makes a hard and boring topic easy and interesting. The days of the month that are irregular are: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 20th, and 24th (so basically that's what they are rapping; it doesn't sound so cool in English, but it sounds so cool in Japanese. That's cultural difference right there! Haha). It's a lot, and can really overwhelm students, but if you try to memorize it in terms of a rap then it is not long at all, and it's kind of cool.

Lesson 3 (Kayoko)

December 30, 2010

Finally I got to have another lesson with Kayoko. We reviewed the numbers and counting, and then had several lessons on months and days of the month, how to ask “when is your birthday?”, and how to address other people’s family members, and how to address my own family members.

  

In English there are only two ways to count: either one, two, three,…or first, second, third… However, in Japanese there are many different ways for counting. Counting dates is different from counting people, and counting people is different from counting hamburgers. At first I was shocked to hear there are so many different counting “systems,” and thought it is really weird because neither in English nor in Chinese have I encountered similar things. Nevertheless when I reflect on it after a while, I realize that Japanese’s complicated counting systems were probably influenced by Chinese. Kayoko told me that it is said that you can tell whether a person truly knows Japanese well by assessing whether this person have mastered the counting system. This saying reminded me that in Chinese it is said that the hardest aspect of Chinese to master is the measure-words. 

10 pgs of handouts at once!

Materials

I received 10 pages of handouts just today! I liked to take home so many references because I wanted to learn more during the class session, yet it was impossible to remember everything. I really appreciated all the handouts Kayoko photocopied for me free of charge, and they were very helpful when I studied them on my own.

Visual aid and a fun class 

Kayoko seemed to have a video clip for EVERY topic we covered. Short clips were a good way to provide a different stimulation to keep students from boredom. The youtube video she showed me this time was about two Australians speaking Japanese in a rap beat Rhythm. 

My other journal entry talks about it, Visual Aid.

Student's Background/Mindset

My teacher asked me several times what rule or pattern do I notice. For example, when talking about the days of the month, there were 13 days that were unlike the rest and had to be said differently. Kayoko asked me what rule I notice.  I noticed myself thinking of linguistic rules because of my linguistic background. In this case, the teacher's question was perceived differently to the listener's ears. In real life, we often encounter such miscommunication situations where the speaker and listener are using the same word but have a somewhat different definition in mind (or refers to different things, or evoke different frames) without realizing it. We do not usually reflect on our definition of a word, not to mention to double check it with another person's definition. We usually think a definition is absolute, but sometimes it can be helpful to be aware of this possible cause of miscommunication.

Feedback

Recasts
"Day" is "nichi" when counting the days of the week (except the irregular ones). However, when it was used in a sentence or question, I somehow pronounced it as "niji." My teacher, Kayoko, noticed and corrected me once, "nichi". I repeated again, "nichi." A few minutes later, I encountered this word in a long sentence, and I still said "niji." This time Kayoko did not explicitly correct me, but she just said, "nichi" after me. Immediately I noticed that I made a mistake, and corrected myself, "nichi," I said. Then Kayoko looked at me, and said, "recast was one of my favorite." It was interesting learning from my fellow colleague exactly because of moments like this! Haha.

Thinking as a language teacher

When I taught at Henry Street High School, I did not have a textbook I could go by.
Therefore there was no set way of teaching a phrase. When I learned that in Japanese they don't say "When is your birthday?" but "What month, what day is your birthday?" (Actually to be more exact, it was "birthday, what month, what day?"  


This triggered me to think, how do Chinese people ask “when is your birthday?” 
I thought of four possible ways:


Ni shenme shihou shengri?             Ni ji yue ji hao shengri?
[You what time birthday (is)?]      [You what month what day bday?]


 Ni shengri shenme shihou?              Ni shengri shi ji yue ji hao?
[Your birthday (is) what time?]       [Your birthday is what time?]

But which one should I teach?
I still don't know.
How can I figure this out?
I don't know the answer to that question either
How come our Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language program did not teach us this?
I don't know.