Sensei
My previous Japanese sensei appeared in today's newspaper. I am so happy to hear the latest news from someone I know. ^^ Lai-sensei was my first Japanese language teacher. Her son is now 13 years old already. Time flies so fast.
Lai-sensei is one of the smartest teacher I have ever encountered. She is an expert in phonetics and is well-versed in several languages. She brought so much fun to our classes. Apart from that, she is very stylish and we always loved to see what dress she wore in the class. :P Sometimes she wore qipao (旗袍, traditional Chinese long gown) as well. Qipao is difficult to wear because one needs to have good body figure to fit in it. On the other hand, Lai-sensei is also a... demanding teacher. She required the applicants to her courses to write an essay on why they want to study Japanese so that she chose only the people who are eagerest to learn to be her students. I was so lucky to have Lai-sensei as my Japanese teacher for all my three years' studies in the university. Well, actually I could only attend her classes during my 1st year of study. During the 2nd year & 3rd year, half of the Japanese classes crashed with my major courses. (Japanese was neither my major, nor my minor. It was just a voluntary course offered by the language centre of the university) Since I love Japanese class so much, I intended to drop my major courses in order to take Japanese. However, my classmates dissuaded me from doing that because no one major in accounting will ever drop the Hong Kong taxation course to take a Japanese course. ;_; (Why on earth I always have to do things I don't like to? ;_; ) Since I skipped half of the Japanese classes during my 2nd year & 3rd year of studies, plus the fact that I was so busy with my major and minor courses, I can't quite remember what I have learnt later on in the Japanese classes. It was only many years later that I decided to pick up my Japanese again.
In recent years, Lai-sensei has devoted much of her time in promoting the use of IPA in learning foreign languages. She thinks that correct pronunciation is a must, and any accent means "wrong pronunciation" and should not be allowed. This is very difficult for local students. For one thing, 99.99% of the local English teachers speak with accents. Unless you are so lucky to have a native-speaker as your teacher, it is highly likely that you will just copy the accent of your teachers. Learning IPA is useful buuuuuuut, the younger you learn it, the better the result. It would be terrible for me to "forget" the pronunciation of all the English words I learnt in school, and to "re-learn" each word one by one through IPA. It takes so much time. ^^;; I wish I had a good teacher when I was young.
Lai-sensei is one of the smartest teacher I have ever encountered. She is an expert in phonetics and is well-versed in several languages. She brought so much fun to our classes. Apart from that, she is very stylish and we always loved to see what dress she wore in the class. :P Sometimes she wore qipao (旗袍, traditional Chinese long gown) as well. Qipao is difficult to wear because one needs to have good body figure to fit in it. On the other hand, Lai-sensei is also a... demanding teacher. She required the applicants to her courses to write an essay on why they want to study Japanese so that she chose only the people who are eagerest to learn to be her students. I was so lucky to have Lai-sensei as my Japanese teacher for all my three years' studies in the university. Well, actually I could only attend her classes during my 1st year of study. During the 2nd year & 3rd year, half of the Japanese classes crashed with my major courses. (Japanese was neither my major, nor my minor. It was just a voluntary course offered by the language centre of the university) Since I love Japanese class so much, I intended to drop my major courses in order to take Japanese. However, my classmates dissuaded me from doing that because no one major in accounting will ever drop the Hong Kong taxation course to take a Japanese course. ;_; (Why on earth I always have to do things I don't like to? ;_; ) Since I skipped half of the Japanese classes during my 2nd year & 3rd year of studies, plus the fact that I was so busy with my major and minor courses, I can't quite remember what I have learnt later on in the Japanese classes. It was only many years later that I decided to pick up my Japanese again.
In recent years, Lai-sensei has devoted much of her time in promoting the use of IPA in learning foreign languages. She thinks that correct pronunciation is a must, and any accent means "wrong pronunciation" and should not be allowed. This is very difficult for local students. For one thing, 99.99% of the local English teachers speak with accents. Unless you are so lucky to have a native-speaker as your teacher, it is highly likely that you will just copy the accent of your teachers. Learning IPA is useful buuuuuuut, the younger you learn it, the better the result. It would be terrible for me to "forget" the pronunciation of all the English words I learnt in school, and to "re-learn" each word one by one through IPA. It takes so much time. ^^;; I wish I had a good teacher when I was young.