Language Resident Name:

Tasuku Sasaoka 

Day and Date:

Wed. Jan. 27th, 2016 

Language and Level (intermediate or advanced class):                                                                                        

Intermediate Japanese

Class theme/topics discussed:


Goal(s) of the class:

Students will practice aru and iru (Japanese verbs that equal “there is” for living and nonliving things).

Students will practice describing a picture only using words.

How did you structure the class?



Title Notes (T: teacher, S: student)
5(5) Attendance check & Announcement T takes attendance and will have a short conversation with students about what is going on in today’s Japan. T also talks about the cultural activity occurring this week.
5(10) Introduction T puts a blindfold on himself and asks Ss to describe the classroom they are in. After the description T gives feedback to those descriptions and introduces today’s topics.



10(20) Pre-Activity T asks questions about the rules of using aru and iru. After students remembered the general rules, teacher asks about the exceptional cases (e.g. robots, taxi, lovers, family, zombie, corpus of insects, grandfather’s bones). Through the discussion S tries to refine the rules they already know and make it into more specific one.




5(20) Presentation T presents the rules using the slides, summarizing Ss’ disucussions.




15(35) Practice aru iru practice

Ss practice the use of iru and aru with power point slides.   First, each S says aru or iru based on the picture shown in the screen. After that, S makes a sentence that describes the picture with a proper word use. Finally, Ss practice by saying an inappropriate one that does not match to the picture.


Where practice

T also introduces several vocabs that will be helpful in the following activity such as “奥(back)” ,”手前(in front)”.

20(55) Production Blind Pictionary

T draws the frames of the different parts of the picture on the board and asks one S to come up to the board. The S will be in charge of drawing picture while the other classmates describe the picture to the S. They should be as precise as possible in a given amount of time. The S at the board is encouraged not to look back and rely on what he/she hears as much as possible.

When one part is finished, the S changes the role with another student.

When all the parts of the picture have been drawn on the board, the entire picture is revealed to the Ss who can admire their blind reproduction and compare it to the original.

During the activity, T gives corrective feedbacks and hints to help the Ss.

5(60) Consolidation T reviews the class and gives some feedback to students. Ss write down their evaluation on and comments to the today’s class.



Power point presentation

What worked well in this class? What did not work?

   What worked: Pre-activity discussion was quite good because it deals with a topic that is slightly more detailed and complex than the student’s present knowledge, resulting in giving a better understanding of the Japanese grammar.

   What did not work: The discussion took longer time than expected.

How could this class be improved/ modified?

The class was good and appropriate for the students. In order to make it applicable for intermediate class students, I think I need to use easier vocabularies, set a different focus (e.g. more focus on practice), and different pictures for the Production part.
