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Joyful Chatting in Japanese (Japanese) |
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Date/Time : December 16 / 9:45 - 10:35
Japan Time (December 15 / 14:45 - 15:35 Hawaii Time) |
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Teacher Participants : Mr. Sugimoto (suigmoto@wakoku-h.spec.ed.jp), Mr. Baba <----------------------------------------------------------> Ms. Asato |
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It is a wonderful gift for our 12th grader to have shared an enjoyable time with students at Punahou school, Honolulu, as they are studying for the entrance exam of University very hard and very nervous now. It will be a great memory of their high school life. (Locale Newspaper reported, Image written by Japanese) |
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| Story It was a tense moment. As soon as Hawaiian students appeared on the screen and said "Konnichiwa, Hello", conference room was filled with our students' joy shout. Our students are at Typing & WORD class who are 12th grader in General Course and Hawaiian students are at Ms. Asato's Japanese class who are 10th - 11th grader. She has her class get some topics about Japanese culture by themselves and research it ever year. Her class has posted many questions on the BBS in this school year too. Our Research class, who are 12th grader in Computer course, also has posted many questions on it every year, and then both students have been exchanging questions and answers for long time. We thought more and more answers from us make Hawaiian students understand Japanese culture more. So far, 15 students at Research class has already posted this year, we had another 45 students at two typing & WORD classes join to answer there. They took it easy to answer in Japanese and also knew it is Culture Exchange and so they pasted their opinions more than I thought. That made them want to meet each other naturally. Therefore, we had a plan to do a Video Conference (VC) for them. There is 19 hours of time difference between Japan and Hawaii and it is always difficult to harmonize the time for VC. In this time, Hawaiian students helped us to match the time for us, because our students are "Jyuken-sei" who will have to take big exams for some Universities very soon. The time, 9:45 - 10:35, was at second period for our school and afternoon class for Punahou school. There is no Japanese class on that time at Punahou school, so Hawaiian students who takes no class on that time participated in VC. Both classes made three groups each and they asked questions and answered each other. Every group really enjoyed chatting with laughing and laughing. The questions were about daily life, music, favorite singers and so on and when topic of boy/girl friend came up, both students turned in shy and serious, and they recognized to see common face each other. And then, the third group suggested to sing a song "Take me out to the Ball Game" and both groups sang it together. It seemed just a Chorus on the same stage though there is the Pacific Ocean between them. We are proud of my students, of course, as class teacher, we had only one wish to them, what I wanted them to speak a little in English while VC! (Written by Sugimoto) |
