Inhouse Teaching

I had my Japanese lesson this morning, and then one in the afternoon. Ciarán, Rushen, and Binks were up watching the football this morning (noisy people), but only Ciarán stayed in bed. Binks played tennis before class with Lauma, and Rushen had to go into work for a teleconference. Thus, the class had slightly fewer people. Drummond did not turn up, either, going to Tenjin instead, for some reason. Classes are going so slowly now. I feel like we could have finished the whole lessons vocabulary today, even though it was slightly complicated. It certainly did not need two separate lessons to cover two grammar points, especially since they were so similar. Hirata-sensei says that previous years have not been as motivated to learn as we have, so at least she recognises are will to learn. Perhaps something will happen about it, but somehow I doubt it.

After lessons, we had a little meeting with the tutors that are going to be talking with us. Only James, Flick, and I went to represent us, as the others were busy, or sleeping. There were about four Koreans, and about six Taiwanese students there as well. There were about seven tutors, who are training to be teachers, I think. They were all women, which I guess I could have guessed! We are going to talk about once a week, for an hour, individually. There are rules to the conversation, though: only Japanese and no questions about grammar, though we can ask in which contexts different words may be used. I think that it should be good for our speech, though having it done earlier might have been better. I suppose later is better than never. We each had to stand up and give our names, country, and interests. We each did about 10 seconds worth, though I was sitting in the wrong place so ended up going first.

I walked to the station with Flick, as we had missed our bus due to the meeting. She went off to work, and I returned home to potter. I went for dinner with Rushen, though it was not particularly appetising, so later I ate a small pizza as well. Drummond and Brendan turned up to sit and eat with us, which was good company. Afterwards, I gave Drummond a lesson on how to use Excel. We covered many aspects of the program, though he seemed to understand everything – he made notes, even – and was happy for the lesson. Brendan chipped in with different things that one can do. Together, we did well, I think. Drummond says that he will give me some guitar lessons/tips in return, which should be good.