TOTALLY NOT RELATED ^_^

Nothing.

It's 12:30am, I feel sleepy but I won't sleep coz I couldn't sleep coz that would be an academic suicide. Haha.

One exam, one report tomorrow.

But I just want to share to you what I do when I do not study nor work. ^_^

*I've sketched these using scribbler---> http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/


My first attempt! Not so good. haha. Beach, summer time!


Second attempt. This guy is L, from the Japanese anime Death Note. I wasn't able to finish the drawing because I accidentally closed the window. :( Good thing I was able to save earlier. :)

So there! That's what I do.

(I'm hoping to post something essential for your studies next time. Haha. For now, all nonsense. Sorry.) :D

Go ahead, try the website. I LOVE IT! Scribble your boredom away too! And draw like a pro. ^_^

Random

February22 Monday

I opened my schedule. Something bizarre happened and I was so pissed off that I wasn't able to stop myself from sending a message to a staff in Tokyo expressing my discomfort about the matter. Generally, I don't like substitution classes for students whom I've never even had the chance to have lessons with, especially if that student is 'loyal' to certain tutors. So, in a nutshell, this is what happened:

6:55 > notice for substitution class (50 minute class,7-8pm), only 5 minutes to read the student's profile
7:00 > I made a call to the student
7:03> I ended the call
7:16> The student's code was removed from my schedule

I called. The student did not want to talk to me. He wanted his previously reserved tutor. That tutor canceled lessons 5 minutes before the class. That's for sure because the class got transferred to my sched at that time also. At 7pm, the student informed me that his tutor is now willing to take the class. Apparently, the tutor changed mind and is now going to teach. I did not know what to do. He, the student, is in my schedule. Hence, he is my responsibility at that time. But the student did not want my class. Fine. I dropped the call and ranted to Tokyo staff who transferred the class.

Why am I pissed off? Clearly, some people only mind their own time without regards to somebody else's time. The tutor canceled the class 5 minutes before it started, only to change mind in a couple of minutes and tried to get back the student she just lost. Didn't she know what that is? That's a simple form of PIRACY. My point is, we should be responsible of the consequences of our own actions. If you canceled, lost student, opened the sched again---fine. But bear the consequence of not having a student at that slot. Because you lost it, at your own decision. So what now. Since the student wanted his previous tutor, he was transferred back to his tutor. I lost an hour of class, without a student. I sent a message to Tokyo that I didn't appreciate what just happened and asked the staff to rely the message to the tutor and the student, to never pull such act again because if they didn't realize it, they caused a lot of confusion, wasted somebody else's time, caused more work for the staff, lost work for another tutor.

I hate it more that the Tokyo staff was so sorry to me for the tutor's action. I was sorry to the staff--- sorry that he had to take my rants about the situation when it was not even his fault; Sorry that he had to be sorry for another person's irresponsibility; ashamed of the tutor's attitude.

The staff, maybe because he was sorry that I lost one hour, transferred another student to my schedule. That was nice of him. But my mood was spoiled then. It's a good thing I love the students who followed. ^_^

February 25 Thursday

My anniversary with RareJob! wooooooooooooooooo! (party!) Haha. But I didn't realize that 'til Saturday. Lately I'm too busy I'm not aware of the time. It's a good feeling to know that I'm still here after a year. :)

February 27 Saturday

I realized that Thursday marks my one year teaching. Haha! So, I was curious and feeling sentimental at that time. I went back to my very first day in my schedule. I taught 3.5 hours, 6 students. I opened each student's profile and I was so happy to know that 4 of them are still taking lessons with RareJob. Yey! ^_^ The other 2 stopped last year around August and September. I can't help thinking why. -_-

February 28 Sunday

One of the rare days that I open a morning schedule. Waaaaaaaaah! It was so hard to wake up! I think I barely slept for fear that I wouldn't be able to wake up in time for my class. :D

Why did I teach? Because my cancellation rate is at 16.8%. That means losing 1/4 of my salary for this month. Haha! Oh no, that can't be! The allowable cancellation is below 15 %. I couldn't teach at night because I have to go somewhere. So I had no choice but to teach in the morning, 3 hours; it brought down my cancellation rate at 14.8%. Yahooooo! I'm safe; my salary's safe. Haha. :D And my students were old ones (I mean, my old students, not new. hehe), I was so happy to talk to them. It felt that it was worth losing sleep just to teach them. After my class at 11 AM Philippine time, I slept again 'til 4 pm. ^_^

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I need to end this post, it's so long already and I feel like I am making this blog all about myself. Hahahaha. Almost 1 AM, Good night! ^_^

1. Pronouns

Before reading through this blog, please answer this question:

Which is correct?
a.) It is me.
b.) It is I.
--------------------
Review: Personal Pronouns

*sorry it's not allowed to upload a table here so just click on the image to enlarge*

RULE: A predicate nominative is in the nominative case.

Predicate Nominative
>> is a noun or pronoun in the predicate that refers to the same thing as the subject of the sentence and it follows a linking verb (am, is, are, may be, can be, will be, may have been, want to be, etc,).

Examples:
> It was they who are having a heated conversation.
> Who told you about it? It was she.
> It might have been he.
--------------------

So, the answer to the question is:
b.) It is I.

(Another dog called Battersea Dog's Home)
Other dog: Hello. Can I talk to Battersea Dog?
Battersea: It is I.
(Or he can also say "It is he." but since he's a dog, I think it's better to say, "It is it." Haha)

Now, you might think that it doesn't sound right to say "It is I". It is because the use of "me" or other pronoun in objective case as predicate nominative is widely accepted and you might often hear "It's me/him/us/them" rather than "It's I/he/we/they". In informal situations, it is acceptable to use objective case but if you are writing formal paper or speech or in examinations, it is still best to use the nominative case---the form "It's I."

Confused? Haha that's okay, you can't be wrong, they're both accepted anyway; it just depends on the situation. Try this exercise. Good luck!

Exercise: Supply the pronouns specified:
1. It might have been ______. (Third person singular, feminine.)
2. It could be _______. (third person plural)
3. That was ______. (third person singular, masculine)
4. It certainly wasn't ______. (third person plural)

Next time, I will discuss more on the use of 'me' and 'I'. ^_^

II. The Japanese Basic Grammar

After hundreds of teaching hours and hundreds of students, I still wonder about the following
(these are the common mistakes that my students make):

1. When a student talks in fragments, the sentence is either cut where the preposition should be or where a verb (usually taking a different form) is.

2. During a reading exercise, of course the reason for /r/ and /l/ mispronunciation I already know, but another thing which caught my attention is when students omit 's' at the end of plural nouns (that is very common).

3. Omission of articles. This also one of the parts of the sentence that students often forget: a, an, the.

Today, as I was reading the grammar section of my little booklet of Japanese phrase and dictionary, I finally found the answers to these questions! :D

I love these books. :)

So, I learned the following:

1. The Japanese verb has only two tenses: present and past. The future tense is only understood from the context. Interesting, it's much much simpler than English. (About prepositions: Well, I don't wonder much about the difficulty of students with the use of prepositions because IT IS REALLY HARD. Even I get confused sometimes. Haha!)

2. Plurals do not exist in Japanese language and all nouns have one single form which does not change according to the use of the noun in the sentence. I was studying Japanese before, how come I did not notice that earlier? ^_^

3. Pretty much the same reason as the second, article is often forgotten by the students because it also doesn't exist since the noun takes a single form. And so I learned that hon could mean book, a book, the book, books, or the books.

Now I know! ^__^

HELL WEEK

I just felt the need to post something here. :)

Lately, I'm really busy that I couldn't afford to write in my blogs (this is just one of my blogsites). But today, I couldn't resist the urge to post about my week. So I want to introduce you to the UP students' term "Hell Week".

Yep. As I assume you already know, hell is the opposite of heaven and a place in which no one would want to be in. In UP, whether the students like it or not, exams in different subjects usually fall on the same period. One season is the midterms (middle of the term/ semester); another is the finals week. During these times, students stay up during most of the nights, consume coffee more than they usually take, and go to class looking like a mess. The times when suddenly, 24 hours of the day is not enough and we'd wish it's 36 hours instead. This is also the time when professors give reports, exams, quizzes, papers, and whatever projects they might think of--- ALL to be accomplished during the week.

As an architecture student, I'm not used to this 'hell week' thing. And as all UP students know (only DIliman and Mindanao campus offer BS Architecture), we, the College of Architecture somewhat has our own culture. Instead of a week, we have "Hell Month/s". Haha! Yes, since most of the drawings required, or what we call 'plates', are impossible to finish in a week... most projects are to be done in a month's time or even longer. The good thing is, we don't have so much of objective type of written exams in our college, drawings alone keep us awake for loooong hours. In my case, I have experienced 40 hours straight without sleep (and food--- i survived with coffee, or water, or milk and some biscuits. Food makes me sleepy so it's a no-no.)

But this semester is a little different for me. For the first time in my college life, I don't have any architecture subject. I decided to drop my thesis last year and so here I am taking non-major subjects to fill up the units needed. And so, I'm also introduced to what other UP students experience during these times. Instead of using pens and colors to draw, I'm using keyboard to write reaction papers; instead of looking at big blank white or tracing paper, I'm deep into reading books. I don't have to count how many sheets of drawings I need to finish but instead, I'm counting how many pages I still need to read. This semester, I still haven't experienced falling asleep bent on my drafting table but instead, lately, I'm getting used to waking up with my book covering my face or my notes crumpled because I slept on it.

OH! But the stress is a little lighter this time. Nevertheless, I'd still choose to do plates than papers, take esquisse rather than exams, and prefer 'hell month' over 'hell week'.

But it's not all that bad, after one 'hell week', there are endless parties and celebrations that students look forward too, whether they pass or fail on whatever school requirements. ^_^ (Like on Friday night, I'll be attending a party. YEY! :D)

But I still have one reaction paper to submit tomorrow, two exams on Thursday, and one exam on Friday. OH! I gotta study!


*esquisse is French for sketch. In our college, that means on-the-spot design or any drawing exercise/exams.

I. Read. Listen. Speak. Write.

When I started teaching, I thought that it's gonna be easy as long as I know how to speak English. But I was so wrong.

I had difficulty specially on the first week of teaching due to a variety of reasons:

a. As an architecture student, I'm a very visual person. I am trained to explain concepts through graphics and that was one big limitation of teaching online--- I cannot explain using visuals.
b. I know what I know but I cannot tell you or put into words what I know. That's my problem even in school. Being articulate with my thoughts is one thing I need to learn.
c. I am not patient. ^.^

I am currently studying the Japanese language, it's sooooo hard (even harder than learning English) and I don't like my teacher which makes it even harder. But I realized one thing, no matter what the shortcomings of your teacher/tutor are, the greater part of learning still lies in the hands of the students.

So...learn and LEARN...

1. TO READ. Read as much as you can. And I don't mean textbooks. Though you can learn a lot from textbooks, I think language can best be learned in a more natural setting--- magazines, advertisements, novels, comics, anything. Even if you don't understand, read it. Then read it again. And don't forget to read between the lines, meaning--- understand the material based on context. You don't need your dictionary all the time. You can learn the definition of something by analyzing how it was used in the sentence or by observing the situation by which it occurs.

Do you like to eat? I LOVE to eat and I also LOVE to READ. Go on!
FEED YOUR MIND.

2. TO LISTEN. The hardest part, eh? Yes, I would have to agree on that. And because it's the hardest, the more that you need to do it. Watch movies, listen to music, download podcasts, make use of free online materials. It's hard to understand? It's fast? So what? Listen to it. Then listen again and again and again. Although your ultimate goal is to, of course, understand what is being said in the material, there's another important thing that can be learned through listening. That is--- FAMILIARIZATION. You don't understand it not because it's fast but because you're not familiar with the words and how they sound. When you get familiarized with words and expressions, the next time you hear it...even if your ears didn't catch the entire phrase/sentences, your mind can process what you have just heard--- MEMORY.

When you read, you get familiar with the spelling. When you listen, you learn the pronunciation which will make you know how to speak.

xkcd.com

3. TO SPEAK. Be confident. CONVERSE. Even if you read and listen too much, it won't help you unless you put that knowledge into test through speaking. You don't have anyone to talk to? Then talk to your dog, to the guy on TV, to your computer, even to yourself. ^_^

Say it out loud. When you read, read out loud. When you hear something, mimic it out loud. Then say it to yourself and repeat it again and again. If you've read or heard something new and you don't try to say it out loud or repeat it, chances are...you would not remember it.

4. TO WRITE. It's easier to write than to speak using a foreign language. In writing, you have the luxury of time to compose your thoughts. You can also go back and read it again and correct your own mistakes.

Write just about anything. Write about your day, the weather, the insect, the dust on top of your table, Doraemon... blah blah blah...there are endless topics that you can write about. But hey! Are you too lazy to make up something about whatever? You don't have to think of a topic of your own. You can write about what you've read. COPY IT. Write about what you've heard. NOTE IT DOWN. Write about the conversation you just had. MAKE A JOURNAL.

Why? When you saw or heard an unfamiliar word, you look it up in the dictionary, right? Then you read the definition. And the next time you encounter that word again, you remember you've read or heard about it before but can't remember what it means. That happens all the time. So what to do? WRITE IT. I'm sure you're not new to this style of memorization. In architecture school, we are taught that if we're not excellent in drawing, we could copy from drawing books or from our surrounding or from wherever. So the next time we need to draw similar images, we can do it from memory. That is called MUSCLE MEMORY. You, or your muscles, remember that you've already done it before, the strokes become familiar.

This is what I call REINFORCING. You are helping your brain to remember.


Note that in this post, the keywords are MEMORIZATION and FAMILIARIZATION. You memorize the rules but not all aspects of language have rules and that's when being familiar will help you. One tip: IF IT DOESN'T SOUND RIGHT, CHANCES ARE, IT IS NOT RIGHT. That's true most of the time. Haha!

So READ, LISTEN, SPEAK, and WRITE.

I will follow the same for learning Japanese language. ^_^

Ganbattene!

my purpose (or this blog's purpose)

I've been teaching for almost a year now and my experience in RareJob is really priceless...

Since late 2008, my housemate has been urging me to join RareJob but I always gave her endless reasons why I don't want to: it's hard (well, IT IS HARD), I'm afraid of application process (that one is easy :D), and I don't know how to teach (or it's hard to impart whatever I know). Finally in February 2009, I joined the club. ^_^

This blog is for keeping whatever memories I have with my students, more tutorials, to enhance understanding between student and tutor, and *hopefully* to encourage my students to practice English through writing. I always tell my students to write, to blog, to have their diary or journal and I thought, that wouldn't be an effective suggestion unless I keep one myself.

So I started this blog which is open to the students' or other tutors' opinions, suggestions, and even violent reactions. :D

Posts will be in English entirely but I'm hoping that one day, I could input a Japanese translation with each. As for now, I'd still have to take my Japanese language class more seriously. ^.^