How to Talk to Foreigners

After a discussion with an old high-school friend about things that should be taught in public schools in order to insure a well-informed citizenry, two big things were lacking from our public education experience: how to fill out important forms, such as job applications and taxes, and how to best communicate with foreigners. How to fill out forms is a pretty concrete subject, but speaking with non-native speakers is more open to opinion, interpretation, and an individual’s skills.

Then I realized I am in the perfect position to develop a lesson on the matter, being a second language learner as well as a teacher. I am also in a great community to develop this lesson.

Before I (sway) your opinion with my thoughts on the matter (and I have about 5 pages worth of stuff to say on the matter), I want to hear what you all believe are good strategies for speaking to foreigners (or, perhaps it would be best to say “non-native speakers”), and what should be avoided.

So, please leave a comment, or email me, or message me, or come have a chat with me! You can answer from either point of view: as someone speaking to a foreigner, or as a foreigner and how you'd like to be spoken to. My first lesson will be this Thursday, October 18th.

 

Battle Animals

In classes, my second years are studying comparatives (more, better, faster) and superlatives (most, best, strongest).

I decided, what better way to use comparatives and superlatives to have a pokemon battle?

Well, okay, I didn't use pokemon. I used great white sharks, grizzly bears, Lady Gaga, and Jack Sparrow instead. But it was pretty epic.

So, students got to chose which team they wanted to be (Team Clydestale and Team Charizard [Oh! there is a pokemon!]), and then they had three-ish minutes to write as many sentences about their animal as they could. I told them it was certain that the Squirrel was the fastest, sneakiest, smartest, and most dangerous-- because squirrels are ninja! [Hey, nifty ways to model language! And teach them truths of the universe.] Then I told them they had to pick their favorite sentence and memorize it, and then race to write them on the board (relay-fashion, passing the chalk down the line).

There was one student had wanted to get President Obama (he had marked Obama as "the best of all" at the beginning of the class when I asked the students which they thought was the best animal), but his team had chosen horse. So he was writing sentences like "Horse is dirtier than Obama" and "Horse is not as fast as Obama."

I gave one point for each correctly written sentence.

Jack Sparrow and Obama had a pretty intense show-down, but the squirrel kicked all their butts!

Helloでございます *

Takeo Seiryo J.H.S.
is a junior high school for the smarties.

In Japan, Junior High Schools are grades 7-9, which I think is a very good division. The little 7th graders can be tiny (but sooo cute!), but they are old enough to be curious about adulthood, and having eighth and ninth graders around are good role models. So many seventh graders look up to their sempai, or elder classmates, and the 9th graders are all very busy with entrance exams, exit exams, in the middle exams, and I-don't-even-know-why-they-have-them exams.

I have 480 students: 40 students per class, 4 classes per grade, and 3 grades.

All of my students are very motivated, and while they were rather terrified of be at first, now I'm being greeted as I walk down the hallways. The 7th graders (called 1st graders, because they are first year middle school) are always the noisiest, the 8th graders (second years) are becoming quieter, and the 9th graders are rather studious. 3rd year English classes are divided into three parts-- four lower ranking classes and two higher ranking classes. Each class has around 25 students.




These are poems from a fun class I did with my lower-level third-year students-- it was before tests and the teacher didn't want to do anything to stressful... so poetry!!! :D

One of my team-teachers had a poetry worksheet, and I created a supplement worksheet with 5 of my poems and two haiku I found from the internet. My worksheet looked something like this:


Ms. Mary's Haiku

Alone in the cold
the blue chrysanthemum clings
to the craggy ledge

rain softens shadows
with a gentle purr, waiting
outside my window.

The shell twists back on
itself, coming round again
and again and again.


Mary's 1234-1 Poems

Travel
... very far
Making new friends
Leaving old ones behind.
Me

Biscuits
and tea,
reading a book
on a rainy Sunday:
Bliss.




Then the students wrote their own 1-2-3-4-1 poems, using mine as models.

I really enjoyed reading all of them! But, instead of giving you the 90 or so poems I had to read, I'll give you my top 20 favorites. :)



morning
a street
died some cicadas
silent inform end summer
lonely

tennis
very interesting
hit! hit! hit!
and run! run! run!

rainbows
many colors
very big bridge
people become very happy
Peace.

April
school start
come new students
studying talking playing loving
youth

Food
I’m loving
Meat cake maruboro
Everything is beautiful
HAPPY

kendo
origin war
I play kendo
It’s afraid and interesting
Try!

Art
use pencil
And paper ext…
Best need soft idea
Interesting

Animals—on the print

Tennis
very interesting
serve receive stroke
on a sunny Sunday
exciting

Japan
our country
beautiful green safe
it is very small
forever

Friends
I’m happy
I love them
talking, playing, crying, laughing
youth

A full moon
with a dark night
shining beautifully over the horizon
very beautiful

sports
playing basketball
run, cried, laughed
we practiced very hard
happy


* * *


Sometimes, the students didn’t write much, if at all. So, I wrote them poetry on their empty pages.

Empty.
This page
makes me wonder,
where are all the
words?

“School,”
she wrote,
but then she
drew a picture. No
English.

“Dream,”
he wrote,
but then said
nothing. It was rather
sad.

“Spring,”
she was
going to write
something—but had no
time.

To a poem that had

School
very funny

written on it, I replied:

This
poem was
started, but it
was never finished. So
sad.


*The title of this blog post was a quote from one of my students. でございます (de gozaimasu) is a politeness modifier. Golly, I love English/Japanese mixes.

A Fun Day with Phonetics

Today I laughed until my belly hurt.

Why? Because of phonetics:
In Japan, there is no "si" sound, only "shi."
Also, the Japanese do not distinguish between "l" and "r."

It makes sentences like:
"Mrs. Rosa Parks was sitting on a bus, clapping" very interesting.


P.S. That is a line from one of the speeches for the national speech contest.

Teaching on Aug 26

Facebook:
"You know you're a dork when: Your student makes a mistake with a postnominal reflex, and you 1.) know what it is, and 2.) it makes you giggle happily for 10 minutes, and then you write yourself a note about it."

Small grammar lesson: postnominal reflexes don't exist in English, though they do in other languages. They look something like this: "I know the man you talked to _him_."
The error my student make probably isn't a postnominal reflex, because I don't think Japanese actually has it. (I was grasping at straws. Being able to remember something, anything, from my grammar classes made me giddy.)

Anyway,
I'M IN JAPAN! School has started!
Seiryo Junior High School students apparently don't understand the concept of "Summer Vacation." Classes don't official start until September 1st, but already I've taught 4 self-introduction lessons, with many more to come. And I've made 80 COPIES of my FIRST WORKSHEET. IT WAS AMAZING! And my school has a paper cutter that uses lasers! I'm tempted to peek, but then my eyes might bleed out. I was also introduced to the industrial-strength shredder, which rocked my socks. I'll only feed it with my left hand, 'cause if my if my hand gets ripped off I want to still be able to draw. :)

I'm officially a real teacher.
A real dorky teacher.