Two weeks ago when I went to my English Conversation I class on Thursday afternoon after lunch, I found the group of six lively girls who sit together in the center front of the room in three pairs having a birthday party for one of their number, complete with cake. Then when one last boy was giving his short speech to start the class, he began by having us sing "Happy Birthday" to the student. So that was all quite fun.
Then last Thursday when I went to the class after lunch, I found the six lively girls playing cards with great enthusiasm and happy noise, so I could tease them about gambling and enjoy making them practice saying "casino" with English instead of Japanese pronunciation (we were practicing pronunciation of difficult sounds like th, l, v, and s that stays s and doesn't change to sh before "e" sounds). I wonder what they'll be up to this Thursday? In general, I am really enjoying this year's classes because so many of the students are lively. Also, for the first time ever since I came to Fukuoka University in 1997, I am teaching first year conversation AND Freshman English (basically conversation) to two different sets of about 27 freshmen English majors (in the past I only had those classes were always with students from other departments and faculties). So that means that in addition to my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class for all 107 first year English majors this year, I get to teach about half of them in smaller and more intimate conversation type classes. So that means I get to know about half of them twice as well as I normally do. And I'm really enjoying spending time with the young ones. There are a number of intelligent, diligent, and motivated students of high enough English ability to understand most of what I say in English in class, so they make up for the handful who probably don't understand anything I say and generally make me happy to be in the classroom. This is especially important because we've just entered the horrible annual rainy season, which is so hot and humid and well rainy...
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JP
5/30/2018 07:59:53 am
testing comments again
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
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May 2024
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