A Year in Kagoshima, Japan

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Student Work

As I finish up my last few classes at my three schools, I thought it only appropriate to post some of my students' best work up here. From these pictures you can get a pretty good idea of my students' level of english (high school students), which is, well, pretty minimal. The activity was for the festival Tanabata, which usually involves writing wishes on a certain kind of paper and then attaching them to a bamboo tree, then burning the bamboo tree to set the wishes free.

I always jump at the chance to do something crafty with my students, mostly because I love being crafty. While this activity elicited a lot of responses of "eigo de?! Majide?!" ("in english?! Seriously?!") some of my students still got pretty into it, at least as into any class activity as high schoolers can get. Below are some silly wishes from some of my students. Common wishes include "mony, manneee, or money", white skin, or to be tall or big.

This student's omission of the verb "to be" really took his wish in a whole other direction.


This girl wrote "each otter" instead of "each other". Kawaii!.

This first year boy surprised me by proclaiming his love for his girlfriend, first by writing it, and then by reading it to the whole class! I always find it interesting that while the students are deathly shy and terrified of speaking or giving their own opinions, almost all of them won't mind proclaiming how badly they want a girlfriend or boyfriend.

I don't really know what this is about, but one of my classes of almost all first year boys decided it would be funny(?) to write that they wanted babies. I honestly wasn't sure if they were joking or not, but seeing how this is the inaka and a fare amount of them will probably be getting married out of high school, I wouldn't rule it out as a common desire, even for fifteen year old boys!

I can't say I'm going to miss being called "kawaii", or constantly being asked whether I'm married or not, but I am going to miss my students, all 1, 500 (?) of them!
Koyama Koko student, hanging her wish.

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