Hi everyone!

I hope you're enjoying the weather this week.  It's beautiful.  I hope the rain stays away for a while!

Group Presentations:
For most of today's lesson, we went through the guidelines for your group presentations.  You were assigned a group and chose your presentation topic.  

We then completed activities about how to organization your presentation (structure and expressions) and how to prepare your outline 

You won't have a lot of time in class to prepare for your presentations, so make sure you arrange time with your group outside of class to plan and prepare your presentation.  

Discussions:
Since we spent most our our lesson on learning how to organize our presentations, we only have enough time for one round of discussions.  However, I'm quite impressed with how much everyone has improved this semester, especially with conversational style.  Keep up the good work!

For next week's discussions, remember these points:

1. Show interest when you are listening to others.  This lets the speaker know that you are interested in his/her comments (e.g. I see. / Yeah. / Uh-huh.)
2. No Japanese.  There are a few groups that are slipping in Japanese during discussions.  If you need to use Japanese for a vocabulary term, that is ok.  However, there should be NO long explanations in Japanese.  Please be aware that using Japanese (by the group leader or members) will result in a lower score for the group leader's discussion.   

Homework:

1. Blog comment #8
2. Discussion preparation
3. Presentation Research 
4. Start preparing presentation outline

• due June 19 before 12noon by email
• ntakeda.aogaku@yahoo.com

Blog Question #8:

What is your presentation topic?  Why did you choose this person?  

*Write 8-10 sentences.
*Use capitalization, punctuation & spelling correctly.
*Submit by Wednesday, June 12 by 6:00pm.

Hi everyone,

What another busy class!  I can't believe we're already half way through May!

Discussions:
Good work with your discussions in today's class.  There's ben a big improvement in the explanation of your summaries and participation in your discussions.  In today's class, you got feedback on these discussion strategies:

1.  Showing Interest
When you are listening, you need to show the speaker that you are paying attention.  To show interest, you can use these expressions:
a.  Uh-huh
b.  Yeah.
c.  I see.

2.  Encourage Comments
In your discussions, you need to encourage your group members to ask questions about and/or give comments on the opinion's of other group members.  You can use these expressions to increase participation:
a.  Do you have anything to add to (Natsumi)'s opinion?
b.  Any questions for (Natsumi)?

Homework:
1.  Discussion Preparation
2.  Blog Post #5

Blog Question #5:

What is your pet peeve?

• Write 8-10 sentences.
• Use capitalization, punctuation & spelling correctly.
• Submit by Wednesday, May 22 by 6:00pm.