During fall term, I worked as a writing support tutor for the library and really enjoyed it.  Basically the job involved going to an hour-long professional development training every week and then meeting with students on an appointment basis to work on any step of the writing process together.  The writing support center asked if I was interested in being a teaching assistant for a pilot project they are running at ICU in the winter.  The project developed because of the ICU professors' frustration in the Japanese undergraduate students' writing ability in English.  Thus, a new kind of course was born - one that requires all writing assignments to be in English but also provides TA writing support outside of class.

I agreed to give it a try and this winter term I'm one of two TAs for the undergraduate linguistics course, the History of the English Language (or HEL as we used to call it at Hope College).  I actually took this class as an undergraduate and loved it, which was part of the idea why I wanted to be one of the TAs.  The pilot program is organized a bit differently and involves me getting paid to sit in the class twice a week for two hours each time as well as a one hour training once a week on Fridays.  Our trainers are a ESL professional from the U.K. and a Japanese professor.  My co-TA is a Japanese PhD student also interested in language acquisition.

Something else that's confused - it's been so warm in Tokyo that the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom on campus

Though I wasn't told much about the position, I made a lot of assumptions - my first mistake.  On the first day of class, we introduced ourselves, described the program and the assistance we could provide outside of class.  Then we sat in the back of the class to listen.  The idea of being in class is to not only understand the main points of the course but also to understand the nature of the writing assignments given.

However, as soon as the course began, I sensed an immediate problem.  Though the subject of the course is English, the textbook is in English and all assignments are to be written in English, the lectures are in Japanese, a fact that I was not aware of nor, it seems, were the people who hired me who were well aware of my (lack of) Japanese language ability.  When I informed my trainers of this, I assumed they wouldn't want me to participate further as the lectures were way over my head.  However, we ended up coming to a kind of compromise with the professor.  I have to sit in the class and whenever the professor thinks there is something really important about the structure/grading of the assignments, she repeats the announcement in English.  A slightly awkward, but effective arrangement.

Most days in that class I try to follow along as best I can and can usually pick up the main idea.  But other times I just give up, read the textbook and catch up on emails, read the news or study Japanese on my own.  I've been finding it an ideal time for blogging as well (I'm sitting in that class now by the way). The most frustrating part of the class is when everyone laughs at something that the teacher says and I can't for the life of me figure out why.  But I find myself wanting to laugh right along with everyone else feeling more and more like the oblivious (but happy) outsider that I am in this country.

Green tea pancakes with red bean paste? I'm game

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