This Blog Used To Be Good.

Since I enjoyed reading last year's November post again, I thought I'd check out last year's December posts too. They were pretty good! I used to fill my blog entries with interesting facts about Japanese culture and relevant quotes from the news. I was a bit like a journalist!

I think they were much better back then, so instead of writing any more now, I think you should click on the link and go back and make sure you have read and appreciated December 2006 first.

The Mid Year Seminar and The JLPT

Hello, how are you?

I'm Super Happy Optimistic Joyful and Prodigious.

Or in Japanese it's something like sugoi kampeki subarashi sekiokuteki genki! Just a little rhyme I learned from a teaching seminar 2 weeks ago. We had a language professor come from Tokyo and he gave a very entertaining speech on learning and enjoying the process. He even picked on me a couple of times to help him out on stage, which was good fun.

I thought what he had to say was really good, especially since it echoed a lot of what I have been reading about learning. It did remind me however that you only remember 30% of what you read. I'm going to go back through the best books that I've read this year and take notes!

Also, you remember 90% of what you say and do, so it's great that at this same seminar I was assigned the role of giving a "Goals for JET and Beyond" presentation to the other teachers. I enjoyed putting it all together, since I've learned a lot about the subject recently, and it was a great chance to share my take on it. And since I was the one giving the talk, almost certainly I'm the one who got the most out of it. They say teachers are the ones who learn the most a school.. it's true for seminars too I think. I'm going to have to see if I can give presentations on other subjects I'm interesting in learning!

I hope the attendees got something out of it. I got positive feed back and a few people said they could see me as a motivational speaker! Well, maybe one day, who knows. I think it went really well and I felt like I'd done a good job. Makes a change from the day job, where I'm not sure the students are even vaguely interested in listening to me or learning anything. I'll be dressing up as Santa and singing Jingle Bells to them this week, in an effort to get some attention.

Also, talking about goals, last weekend saw the completion of the previous six months top priority goal, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JPLT - it's only once a year - results are out in February). I now have to think about what my language goals are for the next 8 months with no formal test to aim for. I've kind of been in goal limbo since then, reorganising and re-prioritising.

This goal setting stuff isn't as easy as it sounds, but I'm glad I'm getting used to it sooner rather than later.

PS. Just in case I don't write again before the big day.. Merry Christmas! It's December now and I'll be off on my travels to Malaysia, Singapore and Cambodia in less than 2 weeks!