10th Grade Oral Exam day

The first class that I had today was 9th grade, and we were preparing to go to America. In March, the 9th grade takes a school trip to Santa Barbara, of course all expenses paid. There they will spend about two weeks in a Residence that would put houses in La Jolla to shame. There are plenty of pictures around the school to remind me how humbled people should be. The residence sit at the top of the mountain with a long road leading up to it. It comes with a tennis court, pool, and a view of Santa Barbara that would make it seem that you're flying in an airplane. It's the only house on the mountain too. And there is enough space on the residence that each girl will have something to do and a nice room to stay in. When I saw the picture, I was impressed.

Anyways, back to the students. The lesson was preparing them to go shopping while they are in the States. We were covering things like taxes, traveler's cheques, money, colors, and anything else they would need. The class though seemed as if died or something. Everyone was just staring off into space. The teachers were wondering what was going on, but we assumed that it was because of the testing next week that has everyone on the verge being brain-dead.
10th grade: These classes were more interesting since I was grading speech performances. I don't know about you, but if you've ever talked to a Japanese international student, you know that the ability to speak English is quite a difficult task. Well teaching in Japan and listening to these students is roughly the same. But the standards of the tests are made for people who are fluent, so therefore, the grades aren't going to be so high. The other teacher and I are nice though, and we understand that we can't fail everyone, so we have to decide amongst ourselves, what's going to be the average.

The first class: Yuri. They were pretty good for the most part. The class was slow to present, I mean there are 35 students and only 40 minutes to present after all the instructions have been explained. So we have to shoot right through them. The first students are always the most scared because they don't have anyone to follow, they actually set the standard of the class. She was ok though. We have to grade on Pronounciation, Intonation, Smoothness, Loudness, Eye Contact, and expressions. The main areas that are difficult for these students are smoothness and prounounciation. I would have to give higher scores for the other section just so they don't fail. But they did ok.

Kiku: the next class was much smaller and Ms. Asada cracked the whip so we had more time to deliberate on scores, but still we had to rush right through it. They were much better, but more quiet. They all have room for improvement.

Fuji: This is a huge class, and most of them are considered the worst in ability. So this was going to be fun. They had some of the better speeches of the day, but also had some of the worst scores too. I mean a couple of them failed because they refused to finish or even start. It was bad because one of the girls was in the English conversation club. That was tough...

Ran: This was the last class of the day, some of the best speakers were in this class. I enjoyed this class because they actually got into the performance was speaking from the heart. You can really tell. But the members of the English club in this class all cracked and didn't recieve the highest scores. That was incredibly disappointing. But at least I know what areas they need to work on to improve their English skills.

After classes, I was talking with the other teacher, Erin Su. She had talked about the schedule for the next section and we both realized that there will only be few more classes before the winter break, which means that they will be her last classes. She's pregnant and I will be replacing her, but it's going to be awkward if she leaves right in the middle of the chapter, since it's her lesson plans, but the other teacher who was in charge of the grade level was absent. So we've got a few things work out. I imagine that I'll be teaching very soon and I will be teaching many grade levels.