Yousaidwhaaaaa?

Yesterday I was off to Yoroshima Middle School instead of my usual CIR meeting. It was on the request of a teacher there who is using some of the students in her studies about language acquisition. She is looking at the fluency level of basic English learners which struck me as kind of strange. I don't know what she had been doing with them during the first 12 weeks of her study, but I am of the opinion that when it comes to fluency in a second language the only thing that is really going to help you is struggling through in the country where the langauge is spoken. I guess you could say that one student's fluency would be higher than anothers depending on how long they spent speaking when they are studying, but in reality, ie when talking to a native speaker, their fluency is always going to be shocking, which is just how we found them to be. They only had 2 minutes each to talk to us, they had questions prepared of course but some of them just froze up and forgot I guess. Well anyway, the best part was that we got cake afterwards. I got a banana caramel pie thing. Yum. Then the teacher drove us home again in her purple Jaguar-looking car.

Yesterday morning I spent attempting to write my speech for the thingo in 3 weeks time. It's getting to the point now where it is quite urgent which seems to be the only thing that will make me sit down and do it. They should really offer me more motivation to do this thing. Like a day off or something. A day off and a carton of beer. And a bit of chocolate.