My Reflection for Cycle 1

For my first cycle of shadowing and goals, I was able to meet most of my goals. I shadowed about twice a week, mainly using youtube videos. Shadowing youtube videos was a lot more difficult than shadowing the text book materials. For one of my practices, I watched a few minutes of Powderpuff Girls in Japanese. Because the powderpuff girls are always so hyper, they talk super fast and in really high voices, so it is difficult to understand. However, I picked up on a few words, like sensee and benkyoshiteru, mainichi, etc, so I was able to get the basic idea when matching the words I knew with the visual aid of the show.

As for my Oral Midterm, I overall think that it went well. There were a couple awkward pauses where I couldn't think of any questions to ask, but I think the conversation had a fairly natural flow. I made a few mistakes, like when I didn't add な　in between りっぱ　and たてもの, but I think I did well with my pronunciation. I was a little nervous at times, so I sounded less natural when I couldn't think of what to say. However, the ten minutes went by pretty quickly. I am proud that I can have a ten minute conversation in Japanese after a quarter of Japanese! It is encouraging to know that I have learned so much in such a short time. 

ダンス！

ほぼ　まいにち　ダンス　を　します。ジャズ　と　バレー　と　ヒップホップ　とボールルーム　が　すきです。きのう　の　ばん　ごご　じゅういちじ　から　ごせん　いち　まで　ダンス　の　 リハーサル　が　ありました。つかれた　です、　でも　とても　たのしかった！

Tokidoki

 かわいい！！！ときどき　は　だいすきです！

Today in class we learned frequency adverbs to add to our vocabulary. These include the words いつも(always),　たいてい (usually), よく (often), ときどき (sometimes), and ぜんぜん　(not at all). I think these words will be very useful to know. It was interesting to learn that "tokidoki" (ときどき）meant "sometimes" because there is a Japanese brand I really like called "Tokidoki" by an Italian designer. I didn't know the name actually meant something, so it is neat to finally make the connection. Here are some Tokidoki designs.

My First Goal Statement!

 これわ　さしめ。おいしそお！

Practicing Shadowing was actually pretty fun! I really liked doing the tongue twisters in class, like, なまむぎ　なまごめ　なまたまご、meaning  "Raw wheat, raw rice, raw egg." In order to improve my pronunciation, my first goal is to be able to produce the Japanese long vowels better, while speaking without too much hesitation. I found that when I tried to speak fast like the audio recording, I didn't pronounce the long vowels long enough. To improve, I will try to shadow for 10 minutes three times a week. I will use the postings on Blackboard along with additional materials. Because I like to watch "Iron Chef," I will practice shadowing while watching "Iron Chef Japan" on youtube.com. Speaking of "Iron Chef," I love Japanese food! Here are some pictures of what I ate in Japan...

Lost in Translation

 おかし！！！

Learning how to translate phrases from English to Japanese, I have realized the big difference between the English and Japanese grammatical structures. This reminded me of some Japanese signs I saw in Japan, with poorly translated English. Even though they are really funny, I can see how easy this could be to mess up. I hope I don't mess up my translations as much as they do!