Teaching Yesterday

Teaching Sato Sensei's class yesterday was a lot of fun. It was amazing to be able to interact with Japanese learners who wanted my help. It reminded me a lot of myself when I was in first year. I spoke a lot but I made a lot of mistakes back then. Now, I can speak for a long time without too many mistakes. It makes me see how far we have come.

I really liked when Johnathon and I were speaking with a group about family and where they came from. Even though they kept saying that they did not know enough, they still tried and it was nice to be able to tell them how to say something in Japanese and knowing full well that we were correct. I wanted to teach them to say things, and I really liked being in the role of a teacher.

I especially liked when I got to speak to the students about Kanji. They really listened to me very intently! I told them about radicals and how there is kunyomi and onnyomi. I was able to tell them things I learned in 2nd year! Later, I asked if they had any questions and they had MANY. I wrote my name in Japanese, wrote out simple kunyomi and onnyomi for easy kanji like OOkii and answered questions about the origins of Kanji and its differences between Chinese. I was amazed at how much I knew!

Overall, I was very happy to teach the people in 1st year Japanese and it is an experience I will never forget. Who knows, maybe I'll be a Japanese teacher too someday!