Getting used to a new teacher
Sep. 21st, 2006 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readsalotTonight's class was an exercise in catching up, and falling behind, and catching up again. Part of this is just getting used to our new teacher's style. At least, I hope that's it.
We started out going over the words for months and days of the month. Both of those are based on counters we already know, but there are always irregularities, and the first 10 days of the month are based on the old Japanese words for 1-10 (whereas most counting uses Chinese-derived words). Also, there are special words for the 14th, 20th, and 24th days. But not too bad, and I kept up on that one. Then we went over words for current, previous, and next week, month, and year, and I fell a bit behind because I was trying to take notes. My hiragana-writing skills are a bit rusty now, so that'll improve.
Then she went over this chapter's new kanji. This was very different from last year, where sensei would write the character slowly twice for us to watch, then give us time to practice it. This sensei wrote each character once at medium speed, showed which hiragana character(s) are written after it, and gave one or two common compounds for each one. Then on to the next, with no time for us to write. I tried to write along, and mostly succeeded, but at the cost of not really learning how to recognize them. Ah well. Lots of practice before the next class will fix that.
Then we had a little conversation about the seasons (part of the new vocabulary in this chapter) and lots of grammar, with periods of practicing with people sitting near us and then reporting on how they'd replied to the questions we were asking. Lots and lots of grammar: plain past tense (as opposed to polite past tense, which we learned last term), and how to talk about having done things in the past, and how to join verb phrases. Well, there's a fairly large homework assignment for Tuesday, so hopefully that'll give me a lot of review. I think I'm also going to try to make up a list of all the verbs I know, and all of the possible conjugations for them, so I can read that in my spare time to pound it into my head. (One of the practice questions we were asking each other was, "What do you do when you have free time?", and since sensei was nearby at the time, one of the guys near me answered, "I study Japanese." It might even be true--he's very good.)
We started out going over the words for months and days of the month. Both of those are based on counters we already know, but there are always irregularities, and the first 10 days of the month are based on the old Japanese words for 1-10 (whereas most counting uses Chinese-derived words). Also, there are special words for the 14th, 20th, and 24th days. But not too bad, and I kept up on that one. Then we went over words for current, previous, and next week, month, and year, and I fell a bit behind because I was trying to take notes. My hiragana-writing skills are a bit rusty now, so that'll improve.
Then she went over this chapter's new kanji. This was very different from last year, where sensei would write the character slowly twice for us to watch, then give us time to practice it. This sensei wrote each character once at medium speed, showed which hiragana character(s) are written after it, and gave one or two common compounds for each one. Then on to the next, with no time for us to write. I tried to write along, and mostly succeeded, but at the cost of not really learning how to recognize them. Ah well. Lots of practice before the next class will fix that.
Then we had a little conversation about the seasons (part of the new vocabulary in this chapter) and lots of grammar, with periods of practicing with people sitting near us and then reporting on how they'd replied to the questions we were asking. Lots and lots of grammar: plain past tense (as opposed to polite past tense, which we learned last term), and how to talk about having done things in the past, and how to join verb phrases. Well, there's a fairly large homework assignment for Tuesday, so hopefully that'll give me a lot of review. I think I'm also going to try to make up a list of all the verbs I know, and all of the possible conjugations for them, so I can read that in my spare time to pound it into my head. (One of the practice questions we were asking each other was, "What do you do when you have free time?", and since sensei was nearby at the time, one of the guys near me answered, "I study Japanese." It might even be true--he's very good.)
