this and that

2008 brings many new and exciting tidings.

first of all i received a confirmation letter that the japanese embassy got my JET application. i will know next month whether or not i will have an interview. on the same note, i'm continuing my nihongoing and am in the second semester of year 2 nihongo. i have also purchased this book (Essential Kanji) to upgrade some of my kanji skills. (i currently hold about a 1st grade reading level... maybe a little less, i know about 185 kanji.) it's a little outdated - it is based off of the touyou kanji list organized around the 1940s in efforts to standardize kanji teaching to lead to greater literacy in japan. the revised standardized list - the jouyou kanji list was organized in 1980. the newer list contains about 90 different kanji; the total sum, however, remains about the same ~~ 2,000. i bought the older book because it still has maintained good reviews, was a little cheaper, and i liked the design better than any other cheezy kanji books i've seen. anyways, this is what i'm going to be working on a great deal this year. i hope to achieve a 3rd grade reading level or better by the time i (hopefully) go to japan. we shall see.

on a sadder note, over the christmas/new year holiday Mei Yun and the Sushi Boat crew all headed up to NYC to spend time in Chinatown with friends and relatives. while up there, Chen Hang (my student) decided to remain in NY to attend school in Chinatown (seeing as he was getting nothing from our lovely chinese-free pittsburgh public schools), so as you can guess, i lost my student.
i am actually quite sad about all of this. i had prepped lessons over break and was currently developing a review game when i heard the news. i didn't get to properly end our sessions and i feel a lack of closure, but its the best for him, he was not getting anything out of our schools. our english sessions, however, had been going phenomenally. he retained almost all of our previous lessons and showed enthusiasm for learning new vocab (structure was not quite so).

presently he has a grasp on:
*20 or so irregular past verbs (make/made, eat/ate, drink/drank, etc.)
*can formulate past/present/future sentences (proper use of -ed/irregular umlaut form, +will for future)
*basic prepositional phrases (above, below, between, behind, under, etc.)
*formulate past/present/future negative sentences with "do" insertion and "did" marking past tense (i will not go, i do not go, i did not go)
*possessive pronouns (my, mine, his, her, your, etc)
*subject pronouns (i, he, she)
*object pronouns (me, him, her)
*general new vocabulary (emotions/feelings, family members, adjectives, etc.)
*just started to work with comparatives/superlatives (good>better>best, big>bigger>biggest) although, i'm not sure much of this sunk in
*pronunciation/spelling improvements

i wish i had more time, but i'm grateful for the experience i was able to attain. hopefully it will help me if i get accepted to jet. i can imagine it will be even easier because basic concepts and explanations can actually be said instead of always referring to an electronic translator.

in other news, i was originally planning on taking a graduate level second language acquisition class (SLA) but eventually bagged the idea. i sat in on one of the classes. i realized that the majority of the class are students seeking out TESOL certificates, which isn't a bad thing, but then found out that literally half of the classes were going to be peer taught (a student would have to present an article and lead a discussion during an entire class each week). one article, surmised by some TESOL kid. not even a PhD hopeful, with undoubtedly much more useful insight. so i decided i would buy the recommended book for the class and read all of the presentation articles on my own. i basically wanted to tune up my thoughts/experience with SLA, but i think i can do a better job of that on my own, at my own pace. the professor was a pretty kawaii older japanese guy slipping up with jinglish throughout the lecture which was interesting, but alas, i won't be going there any more.

oh, one last note: Luna bars are very very oishii! (from the makers of Clif bars)