Tegami

こんにちわ

わたし　わ　オルガ　です。　コルミビア　だいがく　の　がくせい　です。　バラルシヤ　から　きました。くに　わ　きれいな　ところ　でる。　ニューヨーク　わ　おうきいい　やたかい　や　にぎやか　ところ　です。わたし　わ　この　ところ　が　すき　です　から　わたし　の　うち　が　あります。わたし　の　かぞく　も　が　すき　です。　よんにん　が　います。　わたし　の　はは　わとても　しんせつ　おんな　です。はは　の　なまえ　わ　なたしゃ　です。　わたし　の　ちち　わ　おもしろい　ひと　です。　ちち　の　なまえ　わ　さしゃ　です。　おと　の　なまえ　わ　ぱしゃ　です。　かぞく　の　うち　まいどようび　に　ちかてつ　で　かえります。

にほん　りょうり　が　すき　です。　すし　や　おちゃ　わ　すきな　ごはん　です。おいしい　です。　まいしゅう　すし　を　たべます。　まいあさ　おちゃ　を　のみます。まいにち　にほん　おんがく　を　ききます。　おつか　あい　や　あや　うえと　が　すき　です。はるき　むらかみ　の　ほん　まいばん　よみます。　　

わたし　わ　とても　いそがしい　がくせい　です。まいあさ　すぽおつくらぶ　で　じょぎんぐ　を　します。　まいばん　としょかん　で　べんきょお　を　します。　この　ところわ　しずか　と　べんり　です。　

あなた　わ？

オルガ

I really want to go to a Japan-related event in the city.

I also want to start practicing speaking Japanese on a daily basis.

NYC adventures

Music playing: Otsuka Ai - Kingyo Hanabi

It's been a long time since I've written the last time. I've been very busy before the spring break. With all of the work for other classes, studying for midterms and my internship combined it was impossible to keep up with the blog.

Japanese no longer seems easy. It requires a lot of hard work and memorization. I think I'm so focused on the language that Japanese culture started to stand out from the crowd. I keep hearing spoken Japanese and seeing Japanese places everywhere in the city. I was in Greenwich Village last week. Walking around I kept noticing a Japanese Restaurant on every block. I counted more than 12. I started smiling. I never thought that NYC has so many of them! Still thinking about the culture, I saw a European guy approaching me. He was on his cell phone and I heard a part of the phrase: ikimasu. My first thought was, that's crazy! So now they speak Japanese in Europe?! And then a few seconds later I realized that he said "y que mas?" in Spanish. I couldn't help but laughed about it for a minute.

A few days ago I overheard a phone conversation. Not a polite thing to do but I couldn't help it. It's New York. Everyone is on their cell phones. A girl was late to work and called her boss to tell that the trains are not running well. I even understood the first few phrases. That was exciting. =)

Learning new language have helped me to make new friends. For exmaple, I've met a very interesting person from Tokyo and now we are good friends.

I'm happy that the break is over and I can return to the classroon to learn more.

こんばんわ　わたし　わ　とても　いそがしい　 せんしゅう　と　こんしゅう。　

はじめまして。オリガです。わたしわコルミビアだいがくのがくせいです。わたしわベラルシアからきました。たんじょびわしちがつにじゅよっかです。にほんごがすきです。よろしくおねがいします。

I'm trying to memorize Hiragana. I have learned well a part of the phonetic alphabet but there are a few characters left that I can't force my mind to remember. Maybe this is happening because some sounds are more common than others. I'm practicing by writing sentences with familiar words. I also try to listen to J-pop songs and search for familiars words in the song lyrics. Most often I can't encounter any because my vocabulary is very limited at this point. This gives me incentive to translate the songs on my own and learn new words, which I find both interesting and educational. I wish I could remember the words from the textbook in the same easy way...

I'm very enthusiastic about learning the language. I believe that knowledge of vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of fluency. Grammatical structure facilitates understanding and vocabulary expands communicative frontiers. Even though, the course covers the most basic elementary material, I started learning the vocabulary on my own because I would like to be proficient in the areas not covered by the textbook.

Exams

Exams put stress on learning since they involve deadlines by which the material needs to be learned. Exams might be efficient in forcing us to memorize vocab lists and practice the writing systems. I wouldn't mind having more exams, although, I'm responsible for my own knowledge and can do the same work by myself without the strict deadlines.

Presentations

Presentations might be helpful. It depends on whether they cover the cultural aspects or introduce new vocabulary words. Since we are limited in the class time, I don't think we should spend too much time speaking English. Even though we don't know enough to communicate with each other in Japanese, we should still practice the phrases we have just learned.

Better solution:

I think, a more efficient way to learn the cultural aspects of Japan would be to post links to online materials, which could be read in a spare time. That way more information could be shared and we could discuss the most interesting ideas for a short period of time in class.