Mission: English Acquisition

To be honest, besides interview 3, I haven't been doing much revolving around my senior topic. I know, the senior teachers are reading this with disappointment if they even read these. I temporarily put a pause into my Japanese learning due to other matters coming up and new hobbies surfacing. However, when I went into a Japanese ramen restaurant earlier in the month, I was able to read a little bit of the menu. Even though I wasn't able to understand, I could still read! Wooo~ I was also able to ask for chopsticks from this one waitress who only spoke Japanese. It was pretty cool since this was my first face-to-face conversation in Japanese. Although short lived, I talked in Japanese! Started from the bottom now I'm here. ha. i hate myself.

The menu. Yum yum yum.

If you have been keeping up with my blog, you probably would have noticed what I am planning to do for my second independent component, which is teaching English to my sister's friend's eight year old brother, Lawrence. If you didn't know that, well, you know that now. Ha. Even though he has lived in California for a couple of years now, his English still isn't that great because he doesn't interact much with his fellow classmates at school and his parents communicate with him in Tagalog. Of course, English is pretty much a necessity here in the United States, especially when you're older and trying to get a job. Therefore, I have decided to make it my mission to teach him English because I'm such a kind soul.

Unfortunately, Lawrence's family has been sick recently, so I haven't been able to visit. Plus, I'm not sure if he'll be comfortable enough with me to teach him. Lawrence is a pretty shy and anti-social kid; he'd rather stay inside and play his video games than go out and play with his friends. That would make his affective-filter high straight off the bat, so it would be hard for him to actually gain input that I teach him. For my interview 3 (which I did with my mentor because my mentor is awesome), I asked Dr. Russikoff on ways to teach Lawrence and make him comfortable with me. She told me that since he enjoys playing video games, I could play video games with him. That way, he'd see me as a friend, and the learning experience would be more enjoyable. However, when I do so, I should communicate as we play so he'll be able to absorb the input while his affectve-filter is low from the fun he's having. For example, when we're selecting characters to play, I'll say "Who do you want to play as, Lawrence? Do you want to play as Mario or Princess Peach?" or if I lose, I'll say "Wow. GG WP."  She also advises to stay away from writing sentences and drawing because he probably does enough of that at school, and simulating a school-environment or teaching style would just make him uninterested.

Lawrence likes playing Mario Kart, so I'll play that with him. I'm pretty bad at it though, but as the wise philosopher Drake had once said, YOLO. 

Hopefully I'll be able to start teaching him soon. For now, I'll just continue rotting powering through senior year.

I'll see you next month for the monthly blog post. BYE~