Beginners II (Intermediate) on 4/13/09

Yesterday was the 9th class of the Spring Semester 2009, and the 4th session of Lesson 9.
Number of students: 6
Summary: short form + と思います　short form + と言っていました　
Exercises
(1) p. 181 III-A (a), (b)
(2) p. 182 III - B
(3) p. 182 IV-A

I hope you will keep up with Japanese learning over the summer holiday, and I look forward to seeing (and studying with) as many of you as possible in Septemeber!

Have a nice holiday ~

Beginners II on 3/30/09

We didn't have our usual class yesterday, and instead we had a dinner together as our farewell to Dasen.
It was really a nice dinner, but we are going to miss Dasen
But I'm sure we will see him again sometime, either here in Bloomington or somewhere else - perhaps in Minneapolis (?!).


Next week will be our last class in this semester, so please do try to make it!!

Beginners II on 3/23/09

The class yesterday was our 8th class in the spring semester and the 3rd session of Lesson 9. We had 5 students.

Summary: short form negative past tense (verbs, adjectives and Noun+だった／じゃなかった）

Exercises:
(1) Review of short form negatives (both present tense and past tense) of 42 verbs

(2) p.181 II-B Informal speech using short form negatives past tense of adjectives and nouns
(3) p.179 I-B

Important Notice
The next class (March 30th) will be held in a Chinese restaurant called "Oasis" (at the corner of 10th St. and College Mall Rd., near Mama's Restaurant) --- we are going to have a dinner there from 7:30pm, since it will be the last class for us with Dasen.

Intermediate on 3/9/2009

Yesterday was the 7th class of Spring Term 2009, and we had 6 students.
Summary: The second session of Lesson 9. The past tense short forms of verbs. We also did a review test of Lesson 8.

Exercises:
(1) Review of て-form - reviewing て-forms of 50 verbs together with each verb's meaning and past tense short form, in pairs.

(2) p.179-I-A
(3) p.180 II-A

Beginners II/Intermediate on 3/2/2009

We had 6 students today, the 6th class of the Spring Semester 2009.
Summary: Finished Lesson 8 and Introductory session for Lesson 9.
(1) Review Exercises of Lesson 8
(2) Lesson 9: the past tense short forms of the verbs

Exercises:
(1) Review Exercises pp. 168-170 IX-A, B, C, and D
(2) Lesson 9 p. 179 I-A

*I forgot to do the vocabulary test for Lesson 8. I'll do it next week.

Beginners II on 2/23/2009

2/23/2009 was the 5th class of the Spring Semester 2009, and we had 7 students yesterday, including one new student.

Summary:
(1) だれが～ですか／～ますか」
* Difference between the topic markers「は」and「が」, why and in which situations you need to use が. For details, please read pp158-159 of the textbook Genki I.

(2) 「何（なに）か」(in a positive statement and in a question sentence)「何も + negative」(in a negative sentence)
* Note that you don't need the object marker「を」when you use「何か」or 「何も」as an object of the verb of the sentence.
* Compare the following two sentences:
a)「今日（きょう）の朝（あさ）、何か食（た）べましたか。」
　= Did you eat something this morning?
The answer will be yes/no. (This is a "yes/no" question.
b)「今日の朝、何を食べましたか。」
　= What did you eat this morning?
The answer will be what you ate. This is a "what" question.

Beginners II on 2/16/09

Yesterday we had 7 students, including 1 new student.
Summary: Review of last week (～と言っていました）, New Grammar Items:「 ～ないでください」(= how to make negative requests), 「[verb dictionary form]+ のが好きです」(= how to convert a verb into a noun-form)

Exercises:
(1) p.164 IV-B
(2) p.165 V
(3) p.165 VI-A

Homework:
Review how to make "て-form of verbs and adjectives, and how to conjugate verbs and adjectives in short [plain] forms, especially negative short forms.

Beginners II on 2/9/2009

Today we had 6 students.
Summary: Lesson 8 (continued from the previous classes)
The usages of Short Form #2:
making a quotation (a) 「～と思[おも]います」(=I think (that)　～), making a quotation (b) 「ルルさんが～と言[い]っていました」（=Lulu said that ～）

* The usages of Short Form #1 is making an informal/casual speech.

Exercises:
1) p. 163 III-B picture B
2) p. 163 III-C
3) p. 164 IV-A

Beginners II on 2/2/09

Yesterday we had 5 students including two new students.
Summary: Continuation of short forms (Lesson 8). Different uses of short forms: casual conversations and quatations

Exercises we did:
(1) p.162 II-B (casual conversations using adjective sentences and noun+be-verb sentences)

(2) p.162 III-A and III-B ～（だ）と思[おも]います
*For the exercise III-B, we used 「～（だ）と思いますか」for opening question sentences instead of 「～ですか」.

Beginners II/Intermediate on 1/26/09

Yesterday we had 5 students (all usual suspects!).
We started our first class of this semester with a review of the last class in the last semester - short form conjugations of verbs, adjectives and be-verb sentences.

Summary of the class: Short form conjugation and Informal Speech (Lesson 8)

Exercises:
(1) P. 161 - I A & B
(2) P. 161 - 162 II-A

Homework:
Review how to make short forms, if you thought you had forgotten most of it!