Letter to Host Family

山田さんへ、

はじめまして！私は　リウ　ステファニー です。プリンストン大学のー年生です。ノースカロライナからきました。　私のせんこうはこくさいかんけいです。　日本語はおもしろいくて、たのしいので、日本語をならいます。

毎日とてもいそがしいですよ。　プリンストンはときどきたいへんです。　毎日じゅぎょうがあります。日本語のじゅぎょうは一番好きですが、ときどきむずかしいです。よくとしょかんでべんきょうします。　ひまなの時、私はバイオリンをひきます。

週末ときどき友だちとジョギングをします。そして、スケートをするのが好きです。　たべものの中ですしが一番好きです。のみものの中でおちゃが一番よくのみます。私の一番好きな本はむらかみはるきの本です。　

山田さんのしゅつしんはどこですか？どんなまちですか？山田さんはえいごではなしますか？しゅみは何ですか？

よろしくおねがいします！

ーリウ　ステファニー

しんぶん: Turning Trash into Forest in Tokyo

私はよくしんぶんをよみます。"あさひしんぶん"は日本のしんぶん (Asahi Shimbun)。Webサイトは　http://www.asahi.com/english/ です。

今日、私はその "article" をよみました。とてもおもしろいです。

Like any highly modernized, developed city, Tokyo residents accumulate a lot of trash - a heap of discarded food, broken appliances, unneeded clothing, parts, etc. - that goes to a landfill outside of the city. However, an architect, Tadao Ando, is setting up a greening project to turn a giant landfill on Tokyo Bay with 12.3 tons of trash into a FOREST.

"A floating forest to bring a cool breeze to Tokyo Bay"

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/cool_japan/fun_spots/AJ201112020065a

This seems like such a good idea. Hopefully this initiative will gain popularity around the world!

--ステファニー

Cycle 2 Reflections & Cycle 3 Goals

In Cycle 2, one of my main goals was to focus on the flow of my sentences as a whole. I feel that I’ve improved in this aspect a bit, and lately this television broadcast project has also helped me to focus on making my speech sound natural. I’ve also been trying to add emotions to my speaking, so that my speech will not sound flat. These past weeks, our sentences have gotten more and more complex - むずかしいです！

I have not been to 日本語テーブル as often as I had hoped to, though I really enjoyed it during the two evenings I was able to go! まきの先生はとてもおもしろいです。I have also not been able to find a native speaker of Japanese to befriend! I had a few Japanese friends in high school (I attended a boarding school), so I think I should be in touch with them more often!

For Cycle 3, I would like to focus on incorporating the correct て-forms and plain forms into my speech, with a faster reaction time. This also means having the courage to use more complex sentences in speaking. Right now, when I want to construct complex sentences, I have to stop and think: what kind of verb? what change in the verb/adjective? what structure? before I can say anything. This usually takes a long time. I want to practice so much that the て-forms, plain forms, etc. become intuitive, and I won’t have trouble using them flowingly in speech.

To accomplish this goal of speaking in more complex sentences:

1. When doing homework (esp. LA), I will try to speak the sentence I am writing before I write it.
2. I will go to office hours with Sato Sensee to practice and go through mistakes on homework.
3. I will not be afraid to venture to try more complex sentences!
4. I will practice my television script many times, because that includes more complex grammatical forms, and I think that practicing the script will help me to engrain some of the new sentence structures and verb forms.