Katakana Analysis Draft

タマホーム - TamaHome
This was an advertisement for a construction/real estate company. The "ホーム" part is clearly a loanword, but Tama is a section of Tokyo and would normally be written in kanji (多摩市). I think it's written in カタカナ not only to make the company's whole name カタカナ (rather than a mix) and also to highlight the company's modernity/edginess. Their site shows homes which are all of a very modern and bold style, so their choice to write their name in a nontraditional style reflects this.

インクレディブル - Incredible
This came from the ad for the Japanese version of The Incredibles, seen above. It is a loanword from English, and I think it was used here to establish a connection between the English and Japanese versions of the movie. There is a Japanese word for 'incredible,' but this emphasizes that they are the same movie.


I think textbooks explain katakana in different ways because it is such a broad topic that there isn't a "best" way to teach it. Our textbook first introduced it for its use in loanwords, which I think is a good approach because that is where a beginner will see katakana most often. Words like アメリカ and コーヒー are very good words to know when beginning Japanese, whereas onomatopoeia is a much more complicated topic that wouldn't concern most beginners.

じゅぎょうのさいしょの週

先週の月曜日にはじゅぎょうがはじめて、すでに (=already) いそがしいです。でも、各 (かく = each) じゅぎょうが好きです。ああ、本をたくさん読みますから、ライチングセミナーがちょっと好きじゃないです。でも、そのクラスの中で友だちがたくさんありますから、きらいません。毎月曜日と毎水曜日にそのクラスの友だちとばんごはんを食べます。大好きですよ。

そして、私は日本のえいがを見るのはじめました。えいがの日本語はちょっとむずかしいですが、見るのはたのしいです。先週の週末には「となりのトトロ」を見て、とてもよかったです！つぎのえいがは、 千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away) を見たいです。見て、ここで書きます！

PE 1 Goals

Goal: During this PE, I think I really want to focus on speaking fluently and not taking too many pauses to think of the right word/conjugation. I'll continue to work on speed, rhythm, and pitch as well, but I think those will come naturally as side effects of my main goal.

Activities:

• Attend office hours with しばた先生 at least twice, but hopefully more
• Watch at least 15 minutes of anime or 日本のえいが every week to get a feel for natural Japanese speaking
• Shadow things not from the textbook for at least 15 minutes per week

PE3 Reflection

My goal for this PE was to work on the pitch of overall phrases (as opposed to individual words), which I think I did pretty well. Additionally, I was able to improve my speed a bit without losing any accuracy. I (as always) didn't quite reach my goals, but I did better than in previous PEs.

Overall PE Reflection
I think I met all of my PE goals this semester. Compared to when I first started, my speaking is vastly improved and according to しばた先生 is actually pretty good. Next semester I hope to try some different activities and practice them more to improve even faster than this semester.

私のふゆやすみ

私のふゆやすみはとてもよかったです。十二月十四日にうちにかえってたくさんねました。土曜日にははにプレゼントをかうので、あにとデパートにいきました.はははべーキングが大好きなので新しいキッチンウェアをかうました。私はクリスマスに本を五さつやネクタイを二本うけとりました。今年のクリスマスツリーのしゃしんをとるないでしたが、これは先年のがあります：

きれいなですね？

そして、りょうしんと「レ·ミゼラブル」をみました。とてもいいですよ！おんがくが大好きなので、えいがをもう一度みたい。

ぜんぶで、ふゆやすみはたのしかったです。たくさんねて、ゆっくりしましたが今、べんきゅします。

友だちにてがみ

PE2 Reflection and PE3 Goals

I just realized that I started this a few days ago but never posted it. すみません！

PE2 Reflection
I made significant progress on my goal of increased fluidity, but it's still by no means easy. It doesn't help that we're continually learning new grammatical structures which I have to incorporate into my speech. By now though I think I'm pretty solid on almost everything we learned in the earlier chapters. I was not able to do all of the activities I wanted to but I did enough to have an effect.

PE3
Goals:

• Work on pitch patterns of overall phrases.

Activities:

• しばた先生のオフィスアワー once per week
• Shadowing 2 x 10 minutes per week
• Free-speaking 2 x 10 minutes per week