Monday, November 4, 2013

Reflections of My PEs and New Goals

こんばんは!

          Over the past seven weeks, my pronunciation of Japanese has improved significantly. With regards to what I mentioned in the last goal statement, I think my use of pitch has improved. I am able to remember the pitches of the words when I learn them, and am more easily able to actually use that pitch in conversation compared with my speech earlier in the year. In addition, I have found that my speech, although obviously not perfectly fluent, has become much more fluent over the course of the past seven weeks. I am able to speak at a reasonable speed, and am more cautious about using the correct particles in the correct places and not separating words from their particles in speech.
          Although I haven't been able to go as much as I have wanted to 日本語テーブル, especially with the craziness of midterms week, I was able to make it once. I definitely want to start going to 日本語テーブル more often, and probably even on Mondays to at least hear more fluent spoken Japanese more often. In addition, a little more anime watching may be in store so that I can further be exposed to native Japanese speech.

So, it is time to set some new goals for the rest of the semester:
1) I definitely want to keep focusing on pitch and intonation so I can keep improving on that and develop my accent
2) Sometimes I find that I get tripped up in speaking some words, so I would like to improve my fluency in that respect

To these ends, some activities I would like to do are:
1) Go to 日本語テーブル more often, including the Monday Forbes table
2) Do some tongue twisters for future PEs to gain fluency and not stumble over words
3) Find other opportunities (such as anime) to expose myself to native spoken Japanese


じゃ、また!
マシュー・スミス

ぼくのあきやすみ

こんにちは、みなさん!

おげんきですか。みなさんのあきやすみはよかったですか。ぼくのあきやすみはよかったです。せんしゅうのきんようびにうちにかえりました。たいていじゅういちじにおきました。でも、あきやすみもいそがしかったです。

 せんしゅうのどうようびともだちとぼくはシダー・ポイントにいきました。そして、すこし日本語ではなしました。(ぼくのともだちはすこし日本語がわかります。でも、日本語の学生でわありません。それをすこしべんきょうしました。)

でも、ミッドターム・テストがありました。そして、たいへんでした。ぼくはたいていまいにちそれをしました。そして、コンピュータ・サイエンスのしゅくだいがありました。

ぼくはきのう大学にきました。きのうはたくさんしゅくだいをしました。そして、きょうもたくさんしゅくだいをします。でも、学校はいいです。

じゃ、また!
マシュー・スミス