Pronunciation Exercise Cycle 1: どうでしたか？！

Well, it's the night before fall break officially begins for me. I'm packing for my flight home tomorrow. Doing some laundry. Tidying up my wreck of a room.

And now I'm going to reflect on my shadowing exercises. What did I do?

Well, I realized that I never outlined specific STEPS, per se, that I was going to take to fulfill the goals I enumerated on my previous pronunciation exercise post. So I will tell you the steps that I did take to improve my Japanese pronunciation.

1. I sang the "ぼくはくま" song several times.
2. I watched Japanese TV on a few occasions.
3. I studied my butt off for the midterm oral exam and managed to write memorize a super-long and complicated dialogue.
4. I have been faithfully doing the lab activity homework and completing the shadowing exercises.

Here is what I intended to do, but did not do:

1. I planned on attending the にほんごのテーブル this week. But unfortunately, midterm stress and a desperate need to study didn't allow that to happen. -_-
2. I also planned on doing some extra shadowing exercises. This did not happen because currently, I am struggling to do the minimum amount of work for all my courses, let alone extra work.
3. I planned to find some rad Japanese music and jam out to it while I did work. This did not happen, but I am not giving up hope.


Now, I am supposed to tell you how I thought my midterm oral exam went today.

... Well...

I don't think it went badly. Ko-san and I had a very elaborate dialogue planned out. We went to Sato-sensei's office hours and rehearsed it. Sato-sensei said that the character of Suzuki-san would be a very shy character who would only jump in at a few random times. It seemed as though this portion of the exam would be low-key.
However, Shibata-sensei was a much more aggressive Suzuki-san! I was a little intimidated, plus I was running on four hours of sleep. I suppose I should have worked harder on my grammar patterns. But I did my best, and that's all I can hope for! I hope Ko-san and I receive a good grade for all of our hard work.
^-^


Now, I will tell you what my goals are for Pronunciation Exercise Cycle 2.

1. I will attend にほんごのテーブル at least twice during the next cycle.
2. I will do at least two supplementary shadowing exercises.
3. I will listen to some Japanese music in my free time or while doing work.

I don't think these are unreasonable goals.
I will also continue to watch a little Japanese TV. And do my homework, of course.

I can do this!

じゃあ、また。

More にほんご-ness! ^_^

こんにちは！It's a beautiful day. NOT. It's so gross and rainy today.

I'm supposed to be writing about my weekend, but I had such a つまらないせんしゅのしゅまつ that it's pretty pointless to talk about it here. たくさんべんきょうしました。However, I still didn't do awesomely on the exam that I studied for. -_-

I can talk a little bit about my usual day, though. I hope this is of more interest. まいあさごぜんしちじにおきます。This is much too early for me, but I must go to class! そして、シャワーをあびます。わたしはいつもシャワーをあびます。そして、ウィートマンコーレジであさごはんをたべます。いつもあさごはんをたべます。My favorite breakfast food is blueberry muffins, but breakfast burritos come in a close second.

After breakfast, I run to class. ごぜんはちじにじゅぎょうがあります。そして、 おんがくをききます。おんがくがだいすきです！

Shadowing Exercises >_< .

こんいちは！　It's a beautiful day outside. I'm in a good mood... Until I remember that my first shadowing exercise is due at midnight tonight. [Cue sad, dramatic music]

Just joking. I'm not too depressed by the prospect of shadowing exercises. However, I do have a confession: I'm terrible at them! I was so discouraged yesterday by the tongue twisters. I hope that I begin to improve soon...

And on that note, here's my multi-part goal for these pronunciation exercises:

I want to improve my tone. It's such a huge part of speaking authentic-sounding Japanese, so I will work to that end.
I also want to improve my fluency. Japanese sentences are pretty modular, and it's hard for me to smoothly speak a single sentence when I'm trying to focus on its individual parts. No more stopping and starting!
Finally, I want to improve my "reaction time," if you will, when speaking Japanese. I want to be able to speak and reply to others naturally, and I think the best way to do that is to practice over and over, to drill it into my head.

Enough lofty aspirations for one blog post! It's time to go out and enjoy the day with a Snapple from Late Meal. ＾▽＾

にほんのこうこうです。

2006 ににほんへいきました。まいにち、にほんのこうこうにいって、とてもたのしかったです！しょくどうのひるごはんはおいしかったですよ！わたしのクラスメートはフレンドリーでした。よかったです！

このビデオはおもしろくて、いいです。みてください！




This post was added to the blog on 1/10/12. I placed it here to intersperse the videos with the other posts!