Sank you bery muchu! And related articles

Haha!

Just when I was getting more desperate than a cat swimming with a lead bell inspiration hit me and I managed to scrape together perhaps one of the most enjoyed L&L times known to mankind. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. The inspiration was to look in the Aussie Kit that a previous CIR had left here. It is made by the Japan-Australia Foundation and it turns out is pretty bloody useful. Who would have thought? I found a little true or false quiz and thought I might as well use that. The questions were so easy I thought there was no way it would be up there with the fabulous "Where does Mr Kiwi live" story board of a few weeks ago. I will write here the questions I asked;

TRUE OR FALSE:
1. The Australian flag has another country's flag in it.
2. You can buy sushi in Australia.
3. It's OK for children to drink beer in Australia.
4. You can ride on a kangaroo.
5. More than half of Australia's area is desert.
6. Uluru is taller than Tokyo Tower.

The funny part was when I was doing the broadcast the kids operating the camera were all stage whispering what they thought the answer was. And the funnier part was when I came out into the staffroom and was told by teachers (adults) that all the answers were "true". I didn't laugh at them out right but just said they would have to wait until next week to find out and waited until I was in the hallway alone to laugh. I am learning tolerance of ignorance.

Someone who isn't very tolerant of ignorance though, is Yamamuro sensei. After my One Point Lesson on Tuesday morning with the staff during which I introduced and explained such phrases as "and pigs might fly" and "flat out like a lizard drinking" (a tough one to explain), several of the teachers said "Sank you" to me. I have gotten so used to the Japanese accent that I don't even think about it anymore. Even people at uni who are undertaking a major in English will say "Harro" and "Sank you". They just don't seem to place much emphasis on pronunciation, or are just lazy or something. But Yamamuro sensei had a bit of a rave about it saying "they can't even say "thank you" properly, it's a pretty poor effort." And I guess it is really. When I think about how much time and emphasis was spent on the correct pronunciation of sounds when I was learning other languages, it is comparatively lax here. I think maybe they have all just assumed that no matter how hard they try they will never get it right so there's no point trying and often when they are learning English from a Japanese person they have no opportunity to hear the correct pronunciation because the teacher themselves never learnt it. And there are a lot of sounds in the English language that are tricky for them because Japanese really has quite a limited number of sounds. This morning I just spent 5 minutes trying to get the year 1s to say the "o" in nose and toes properly. But forget about "th" and any 3 consonant clusters. Luckily the Aussie accent makes it unnecessary to pronounce the "er" when it comes at the end of words otherwise I would be having a hell of a time with the months. As it is, when they say "octoba, novemba, decemba" I don't mind at all!