Entries this day: Animatrix Work

Animatrix

10:30pm JST Saturday 14 June 2003

Today after work I watched Animatrix and most of the extra stuff on the DVD. Interesting, but not amazing. I'm not particularly enthralled with animation, though I have an intrigued respect for those who produce it. I just think, "damn, that sure is a lot of images to draw."

When listening to the commentary, I could see intellectually why they used certain techniques, but watching the actual clips didn't consciously fill me with the emotions they seemed to

bollucks. (how do you spell that?)

They were like blah blah blah we tried to convey this emotion and that other with the blah blah and I'm like, meh.

The only thing that I did get while watching the film was that a set of the scenes of the robot vs human war included many scenes from actual human tragedies people have inflicted upon one another.

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I gotta drop off the kids at the pool and go to bed.

Work

5:13am JST Sunday 15 June 2003

I've been awake since 4:45 or so thinking about work yesterday. Two things seem particularly noteworthy.

(one) kid, named Shigeshi (I think) is about 10 years old. He lived in the US for four years, and definitely can do any of the Kids' Modules we have at Nova.

His mother has therefore asked us to have him work from a more difficult book. Cory told me yesterday that we needed to push him to do the work from that book; otherwise his mom will be upset, etc.

So I'm kickin' it with this kid, fuckin' around with him as a warm-up, asking where he's from, and telling him he's from all the wrong places, "you're not from Japan, you're from Canada." "No you are from Canada!" and have him identify Canada on a world map, and Mexico and some geography that most American kids his age couldn't do and he's all warmed up and happy and I'm like aight, crack out yer book....

Nova is not an English Conversation School. It's a business. And, from what I can tell, most businesses in Japan will do *ANYTHING* to acquire and retain customers. (*That* is (at least part of the reason) why a store clerk will run to the counter to ring up my purchase. (maybe s/he was restocking shelves as I shopped, begging my pardon if s/he got in my way of anything, then when I headed toward the counter, *bang* s/he was there for me.))

Nova, at the detriment of its ability to help students most effectively, will level up students who say they won't buy any more lessons unless they are leveled up. We've got some students who are officially in level 4, but who have a level 6 ability.

(( not that one's ability in a language can *possibly* be described with a single variable (level), but there is often a correlation between different aspects of language speaking ability across several different variables (speed, precision "I pretty cat", vocabulary "I gorgeous feline", structure "pretty am I cat") so it kinda makes sense to clump these variables into one. ))

Nova, at the request of a parent, will use a different text for a man to man kids lesson. Done correctly, this could be a Very Good Thing for the kid. Might even be Fantastic. Done with a book that is *far* too difficult for even a native speaker of that age, it's a Very Unhelpful Thing.

.... Shigeshi's energy plummeted. He tried to avoid the pain by pulling out the wrong book first. (I didn't know I was being tricked; I didn't know what book the mother had specified. When he couldn't tell me which lesson he was supposed to do in this imposter book, I said, "what lesson does your mom want you to do?" and the real book came out.) Had Cory not said anything like "push him to do it," I woulda been all, wtf? this book is way too difficult.

I'm realizing this now, imagining that *I* could explain to the mom that the book is way too hard. The vocabulary was in the high school reading level for native speakers! and this cat is non-native, non-high school... And he's being forced (at his great detriment (energy plummet proves it to me)) to choke on this horse pill of vocabulary and grammatical gymnastics just because the mom is paying us to choke him!

Argh. And that's the first thing that was keeping me up.

- - - -

(four) level 6 adult students (I hate teaching 4 at a time (actually it's not that I hate it, but.. yeah it is.) cause I can't (yet?) cater a lesson to four different personalities, four different abilities (multiple dimensions included), and then realistically evaluate the students' performance in different areas.. the shit is ridiculous.) were talking about travel with me, and using language like

"Where did you go last week?"

"I went to Switzerland."

"What did you do there?"

"I went there go shopping."

And I'm like "Stop the Presses!" and changed it to "I shopped" but couldn't give them a simple reason why, nor a technique to produce the correct answer in the future.

This morning I figured out what I could have said to them.

"Start with "I." Look at the word after "you." Transform that and put the result after "I." Now memorize what the W-question words are asking and put the answer after whatever you put after the transformed result."

Okay, were I talking to a really smart computer, that might make sense, but I know what I mean, and I could have given them examples and it woulda been great. It is great.

Enough about work. I'm tired again. To sleep or not to sleep.

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6:08am

Wait there's more. I have a great deal of respect for Cory, and he agreed that the book is too hard for Shigeshi. So why does Cory seem powerless to do the right thing (which I judge to be get the mom to get the kid a more appropriate book)? He said the staff has talked to the mom, etc.... There must be some way to get it across. Unless she's just wiggidy wack crazed in the head, which means there is a whole set of different issues to remedy.