February Begins

White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits.

It’s February, the worst month!

I never know what to do in February, it suddenly hits that we’re a month into the new year and the belief that I have plenty of time to accomplish whatever it is I want to do this year evaporates into thin air. I respond in two ways, procrastinating or working on random little tasks. We had entrance examinations on Monday, so while I still went into work we didn’t have any exams to do, but I got everything prepped for the rest of the week. That means tests, exams and presentation grading!

That’s right, this week’s blog is mostly going to focus on exams and assessments!

On Tuesday I did my listening exams for the two communication classes I teach. These were easy, a sit down exam where students listened to audio tracks and answered some questions.

Wednesday was a presentation day. My Business English class does SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Presentations as their final exam. They work in groups to pick an existing company and decide on a place in Nagasaki to open a location in. I suspect that my Business English classes are looking more into getting a credit to graduate rather than have a proper interest in Business, but they do tend to come up with some good points about “foot traffic” and “familiar brands”. I like this assignment because it does get the students thinking in more business terms and how to approach business situations rather than English with a “business” coat of paint where they cover the same skills you would in a business course.

Another presentation on Wednesday was my independent studies class. Most of the students had done their presentations in December as they had to get back to the USA before January but I had one student left. He had chosen to make an experimental film and it was great. Watching how the exchange students view their time in Nagasaki and experiment with ways of presenting that always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

On Thursday we went back to the Communication classes but this time for the speaking exams. These were one-to-one interviews where I let students decide on four questions to ask me a few weeks in advance. Every week I tried to fit some exam practice into their classes so they understood the format and could refine their answers and figure out what potential follow-up questions I might ask in the exam. I like this because it means the students get to tailor their exams to their specific interests (especially in terms of vocabulary) but it means that they also have to deal with less expected follow-up questions to keep the conversation fluent and feeling natural and think on their feet. Honestly, I also got to find out some fun facts about my students and the hobbies they enjoy!

Finally my English in Music and Film class presented … well … films! They each picked a film they enjoyed and talked about it in detail and explained why we should watch them. Again, I got to learn a little more about what my students enjoy and their hobbies. (I also learned that one student started learning English to understand the Transformers instructions!)

I have two exams left, which I’ll do on Monday next week.

Are any other English teachers reading this? Let me know what you do for your exams and assessments in the comments! If any of those assessments sound good to you let me know and I’ll try and upload the rubrics and templates to iSL Collective.

Saturday we spent just chilling and catching up on hobbies, my wife is crocheting an acorn-shaped bag and is helping me learn how to needle felt some damage markers for Bolt-Action. I’m mostly focusing on repainting some of my Space Marines into Ultramarines so that I can have a little bit of conformity among the eclectic collection of miniatures in my office.

On Sunday we hit Nagasaki Lantern Festival. Nagasaki has the largest Chinatown in Japan and every year hundreds of lanterns, some big, some small, some made of plates are set up throughout Chinatown Hamanomachi and the surrounding areas.

It's incredibly busy at night, so we were smart and headed out on Sunday afternoon before the rush. This meant we didn't see all the lanterns light up until later, but we also got a better chance to explore the performance areas (and collect some stamps). The lantern festival is really fun because you get to see some really impressive lanterns, eat lots of festival food (it's been so long since I last had shrimp toast, and I got to share the joy with some of our exchange students!) and really feel like part of the community (we ran into so many people!). For me I also got to get some B-roll for a project I want to do with my communication classes, I'm going to get them to make videos about Nagasaki.

There's still a few more things I want to do during Lantern Festival, but I'll talk about those next week.