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feeling: impatient
listening to: Shingo Mama - Gakuen Tengoku *breakdances*
I mean, really. How many hours of sleep does one person NEED in a night? My day is now pretty much over, till I get to go home, which might not be till late... and my roommate just woke up. She slept more than 12 HOURS. Come on, even I can't bring myself to waste THAT many hours a day. And this happens all the time... when she has to get up before noon for a class (*gasp* that actually happens??), she either goes, comes back, and naps for a few hours, or just sleeps through it. No kidding, it adds up to probably upwards of 70 hours of sleep a week. She's sleeping away literally half of her life. That is sad, people. Even I have better things to do... and that's saying a lot. ¬_¬
So I've mentioned that my Japanese recitation class is taught by someone different (almost) every day, right? Well, also, each week we get a grade report based on our participation and performance during the previous week; grades range from 0 to 4.0, and of course, each daily grade is determined by whichever teacher was grading the class on that day. Well, today I got my grade report from last week. I got all 4.0's that week, but one of the teachers left a comment saying, I quote: "CC comprehension is assigned at the beginning of the lesson so that students starts [sic] to listen to CCs earlier than the night before CC performance. Get yourself familiarized with them at that time." Um... what? Ok, first of all, let me translate for you folks not in my class: CC stands for core conversation. Core conversations are little Japanese dialogs in videos that are available on this CDROM we use for the class. Each day for class, we are expected to have that day's assigned CC or CCs memorized and ready to use in many contexts. Each CC takes much time to memorize, and usually there is other work to do for the class day for which they're assigned. So as it is, you're talking about a bare minimum of 2 hours every night doing Japanese homework; any less and you're simply not going to be prepared. Anyway, back to that teacher's comment... um, what? Ok, yeah, there is a schedule of the daily work for the quarter which is handed out on the first day of class and does not change... but does this person not realize that some people have lives to lead OUTSIDE of class?
...
Ok, let me rephrase that. Does she not realize that memorizing those things take a LOT of time, that they're never the only things we're assigned to do each day (there's also speech drills/applications, writing practice and memorization of symbols, quizzes and tests to study for on occasion, and sometimes written homework), and that we have OTHER classes? Actually, that last point seems to be a problem among ALL teachers. I swear, they all conspire to make all the important work due on the EXACT same day, finals at overlapping times, ridiculous amounts of homework... Anywaaaay, so apparently, that teacher was telling me to memorize the daily CCs days ahead of time, not the night before class. Ok, number one: I simply do not have time to memorize multiple CCs in one evening and KEEP them memorized without mixing them up or forgetting parts by the time they're actually due. As I said, those things take serious time. Number two, each CC introduces new structures and stuff that are hard for us lowly English speakers to understand until we actually discuss them in lectures, which are designated for just that purpose, and memorizing a CC before you have any idea what's going on in it doesn't seem that helpful to me. Number three: I have other things to do. Thank you. Oh, and here is an example of one of the CCs we had to memorize this quarter:
A: Konna no wa, kore dake desu ka.
B: Ie, takusan gozaimasu kedo...
A: Jaa, itsu-tsu kudasai.
B: Itsu-tsu desu ne?
A: Sore kara, kono aoi no mo, mit-tsu onegai shimasu.
B: Aoi no wa, sore dake desu nee.
A: Jaa, kore o mou mit-tsu kudasai.
B: Kashikomarimashita. Hoka ni nanika?
A: Sore dake desu.
which translates to:
A: Is this all there is of this kind of (unmentioned, but it'a file folder thing)?
B: No, we have a lot of them, but... (assumed: how many would you like)?
A: Then, give me five, please.
B: That was five, right?
A: And then, I'd also like three of this blue kind, please.
B: That one is the only blue one we have.
A: Then, give me three more of this kind.
B: Certainly. Anything else?
A: That's all.
This was not the CC that teacher was talking about, by the way; it's an older one. Now, most of the vocabulary in there we already knew, but some of the new structures we had to learn were a new counting system, a few new words with unusual implications that we don't really use in English, and a little new vocabulary. And we had to have ALL of this memorized - every word, every meaning and implication, and many other possible contexts for pretty much every component of it - and ready to use in class the next day in several different situations and contexts. This is a pretty good representation of the other CCs we have to do daily. And she expects us to do more than one or two of these every night instead of waiting till the day before?? Um... yeah. Excuse me while I drop my other classes and grind the rest of my life to a screeching halt. And no one's never had a problem with my CC competence before - in fact, once that same teacher asked me to volunteer and speak up more in class because I knew the stuff so well. God help me. -_- Hrm, come to think of it, the day she was referring to was probaly one of the days I was really sick and couldn't think or talk straight...
Oh, Lord, Shingo Mama ROCKS. XDDD Everybody needs to listen to O'ha Rock, and maybe Gakuen Tengoku, and look him up on the net. Cause he is awesome. And if you have a fast connection, get the mpeg of the "kiss" clip with him and Gackt. *falls out of chair* O'HAAAA!
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 3/15/2002 01:52:00 PM
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