Entries this day: Work

Work

9:28am JST Saturday 28 April 2007 (day 13548)

Yesterday at work, I had like 3 lessons in a row of the worst variety. よろしく, with no freakin' idea what they want to do. No homework, no questions, no nothin'. Ffaauuckkkkin A.

The last of those three was a pair of guys named Miki and Keigo. (( When they first registered over the phone, their names were written down as Miki and Keiko, two obviously female names. What a funny schock to realize they were guys! I had never seen Miki as a guy's name, and have yet to see Keiko as a guy's name.)) I hadn't had a lesson with them before. They came in like Mari and Chika on day one, with no ideas, no questions, no paper, no books, no notebooks, no anything.

I worked hard not to bitch them out in an angry manner, and tried in a gentle manner; I was like, [What do you want to study?] and Miki was like, "English."

I wrote "CAT" on a piece of paper. "Please repeat: cat." and then "DOG" and "please repeat: dog" but they were still like deer in headlights.

"This is English," I assured them.

Nothing.

I checked what book they had been using before, grabbed my copy, turned to a random page that they had ostensibly studied before, given they were reportedly on page 90 of the textbook.

"Please read"

I had them both read the page, and then asked if they had any questions.

No questions.

I used two popsicle sticks to cover vertical columns of the text.

"Please read."

That finally got something.

[Oh... speaking a language is more than just *reading*, but actually *thinking*]

Long story shortened: I challenged them against each other: Miki got 5 points, Keigo got 1. Both were up from an initial score of -1 (negative one).