(no subject)

[moominmolly]

Last night, we learned how to say "sticky hot" in Japanese class. It was appropriate. Later on, when I commented that my belly was bigger than David's, and he replied with "but my stomach is bigger than yours", the teacher looked confused. Perhaps I STILL don't look pregnant to strangers. That baffles me.

The teacher seems to have noticed that fill-in-the-blanks style exercises just allow us to slack off mightily. This week, I entirely failed to do my homework, and just did it on the fly out loud when we were reading the exercises at the end of class. Not good. During the class, we got her sidetracked in discussions of various sentence structures, so most of the class was in a question-and-answer format rather than just following along in a book. It was, in some ways, the most exciting class we've had yet. As a homework assignment this week, she is having us write a composition on any topic, and then memorize it. Aaah! Brilliant! That is a perfect exercise for where I am, right now. I especially like having to memorize it -- the different structures are more likely to stick in my head, that way.

So, due to lack of time to spend studying, we're not tearing up the earth with this class. On the other hand, we're making steady progress, and that feels good.

Comments

[veek.livejournal.com]

Oooh, please do keep writing about the lesson structures. Helps me with ideas for the Italian class I'm teaching. :)

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Personally, I get a lot more out of semi-interactive discussions of structure than I do out of drills and simple exercises. Drills help me a lot with things like numbers, while having a few structures introduced at once and suddenly having to choose between them makes it a lot easier for me to learn all of them than having them introduced one by one and having to create simple pattern-following sentences with them.

Whoo, did that even make sense?

[veek.livejournal.com]

Perfect sense, and just the thing I was looking for. Thanks, nice lady!

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

where are you taking the class?

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

At the Boston Language Instutute (http://www.bostonlanguage.com/). The teacher's great -- I have no idea if most of their classes are as good, since this is the first time I've been there, but I'm quite happy with the one we're taking.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Mmm sticky-hot. Now I want sticky-hot mango rice. Mmmm.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Similarly, I think Liu laoshi has figured out that in-class reading/translations and drills allow us to slack off, too, but she's not sure what to do about it. She's tried to get us to prepare some dialogues, but without a great deal of success.