Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Actually Teaching?

My day has been quite long, but quite enjoyable for the most part. We had a big review test in the morning, with listening and reading sections. I was impressed with my ability to understand practically everything that was said! I am not sure whether this tape was particularly clear, or whether I have become enlightened with respect to listening to Japanese. I hope it is the latter, but I suspect that it is the former. We also had a kanji test, which was easy since I did an hour’s learning this morning. I have forgotten them all now, however!

In the afternoon, we had Seb’s lesson on Japanese history. We covered the post-war occupation of Japan. We were so involved (well, me and maybe Brendan) that we ran over by 10 minutes. I think most people found it interesting, however. We discussed the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, which was basically a sham that resulted in a number of men being branded class-A war criminals. Some were even hanged. Even the allies admitted that the court was a farce, since the top Japanese generals simply took all the flack for the war to protect the Emperor. I watched a programme about it on Channel 4 before I came out, which was quite interesting. These Class-A criminal were not like the Nazi frogmen, sending whole demographics to their death, but were simply leaders in time of war. Some were even charged with plotting to conspire about maybe doing something. So, when the Chinese rant on about the Japanese prime minister visiting a shrine where Class-A criminals’ spirits are interred, you have to take it with a pinch of salt. The Chinese propaganda mill is always at work.

From next term, we are going to read a short novel in Japanese, and translate it into English. Seb studied the book in his third term of Japanese at university, though no doubt, even though we have been studying for an equivalent amount of time, we are far behind where he would have been. It is called "不意の唖" (fui no oshi) and can be translated as “Dumbstruck.” It is novel based on the life of the author (大江健三郎Ooe Kenzaburou) growing up in post-war Japan, and is supposedly a good eye-opener to the way of life of the time.

After that, I taught the second years at Linden Hall and Flick taught the first years. Both Rushen (yesterday) and Binks (today) failed to get cover for the Linden Hall lesson they were missing, so these last couple of days have been taught by just two teachers. My class went quite well: they were well behaved and did the work I set them. Some did it much better than others did, however. I had them draw their name in large bubble letters on a sheet of paper. They then had to draw a point and connect the edges of the letters to it to create a 3D effect. They were quite horribly bad at this, but I at least got Mayu to use the edge of her pencil case as a ruler. Keisuke did a standard 3D effect on each letter, and Mariko spend so long colouring in that she did not get around to adding graphical effects. The others just did it free hand and made a mess. After doing that and colouring it in, they had to write little sentences about themselves around the page, along with illustrations. Teramasa had “I like ginger ale,” for example. However, he takes the attitude that he cannot do it, and so never tries, scribbling everything down as fast as he can and then messing about.

I ate dinner in five minutes before running around madly trying to find a bike. Binks’ was not there for some reason, even though she is in Tokyo, so I stole Drummond’s in the end. I was about three minutes late for the class that I am covering for Binks, though they were already wondering where I was: the woman was hanging out the door and shouting “Edward?” down to me as I arrived! There were three elderly folk in the lesson, and another arrived a little later to observe. They introduced themselves to me, telling me a little about their lives. They spoke good English and I quizzed them on certain aspects. The three had each written a report on a subject of their choosing, one page long. Two had done it on the Winter Olympics, and the third was on Plum and Cherry blossoms (it used a lot of poetic imagery, though it turns out that she writes poetry as well). They each read theirs out, and I then read it back, correcting it. There was not that much to correct, though each had at least one sentence that needed major restructuring. I was glad that I had to spend time quizzing each on their intended meaning. Binks cannot teach again in two weeks time (it is a fortnightly class) but offered to do next Tuesday for them. They prefer their Wednesday slot, so asked if I could do it again for them, so, in effect, I stole one of Binks’ jobs. I hope she does not hate me too much. The pay is quite good as well: £25 for 1hr30.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't tell your sister the rate of pay. She was feeling very happy with the £10 she got for the same time showing a propective student around the University. I think she just shows them the bars and restaurants!

08 March, 2006 18:39  

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