Unfortunately, neither of the above sentences is grammatically correct. They use too many words to express the same concept.

hello again:)
 

I see.
Thank you very much!

Have a nice weekend Koir san

I am going to get out of my town and to stay with my best friend in the city for 3 days!

How about you? What's your plan for this weekend?

No plan to come to Japan yet? ;)

Not sure about the weekend (beyond the usual), but I'm expecting to do a job interview soon. I'll do my best and hope I get the position. I have loans to pay off! :P

Plans are cheap. Reality, however, is very very expensive! :)

oyasumi
 

Oh, good luck!
Does the job have anything to do with Japanese?


Yes, you are right!

I wish the company that is going to have you (Yes,you will get that job!) has something to do with Japan so they would ask you to go to the business trip to Japan!

it's 1am here, I think I should log out and go to bed (actually Futon!)

matane:ywave:

No, but it has a lot to do with what I went to college for over two years.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. But I don't think they'll require me to go to Japan in the year I'll have it (the position is actually for a year, to cover the present employee's maternity leave).

Oyasumi (or however good night is spelled), Mayumi! :)

hiya:)
 

Hello Koir-san,

How was your weekend?
well... it's a bit late to ask about the last weekend right?

and do you have any plan for this weekend?

here in Japan,
we have 5 holidays in a row from 26th
(someone told me that it's called silver week, but I am not sure.
Do you know that we have holidays called "Golden Week"?)
so I am leaving home tomorrow and coming back on Friday night.
visiting my family and friends and 2 cats and a dog in Yokohama.



Yes, you are right!

this is a joke, but...
oya means parent(s)
and su mi sound like... sue me...


have a good day!

Not really much. Being anxious about the job, only to find out everything they told me was an untruth, and they already had a person in mind for the position.

I'm too old and the wrong gender for jobs in this town, apparently. Eh, it just means I should look elsewhere for employment.

Same as the week. Probably more than once wondering what I was doing last year at this time...

Yes I do. One of the things I learned from the Haruhi anime. :)

Ah, cats. They were the one thing that kept me the most sane while I was in college. Relieves stress when for a while I could play with a couple kittens after a day of classes.

Heh. Funny joke there. ;)

hiya;)
 

oh that's not good...

elsewhere?
how about Japan;)



hahaha, that's what I do too!

Haruhi anime... mmm I've never heard of it

I don't know why I love cats so much...
(Almost) everytime I find(meet) a cat on the street (or wherever) I would stop to try to talk(?) to her/him

I think I should be a cat for this Halloween.
I was KIKI (with Jiji on my shoulder) last year.

mmm...

Thank you for saying so:)

can you correct for us?
 

Hello again:)

My students and I sometimes make songs up, but I'm not sure if they are correct English.

Can anyone correct and help us with making good kids songs?
We want to make funny songs.

This is one we just made it up, while we are lerning body parts,
We were supposed to do "Head, Sholders, knees and toes" but we all find it's boring... so we wanted some new song.

"Touch your head and touch your toe and turn around"
"Touch your chin and back, then run run run"
"Touch your head with your elbow and hop hop hop"
... things like these...

Do these make sense?

Only change I can make is "toes" instead of "toe". The rest is perfect. :)

Yes, I did try to touch my head with my elbow.

No, I couldn't do it.

It's not possible ><

hahaha

zurui song!

And congrats working a job where you can use your English :) I have tonnes of students who would be instantly envious of you! ;)

Thank you for your reply.

I actually wanted to explain to touch just one of the toes...
I want the kids to touch their head and also their one of their toes at the same time, then turn around... it's actually very hard to turn around like that so the kids love it.
So... in that case, how should I say?
"Touch your head and touch your toe and turn around"
"(Touch your head with one of your hand and stay, and use another hand to touch one of your toes and say, then turn around)"
I want to make it as simple as possible...

These are also the same...

"Touch your chin and back, then run run run"
"Touch your head with your elbow and hop hop hop"

*tries to touch head with elbow* Oww...

In that case, "touch a toe" would be better :)

Hi ReakJames, thanks for your lovely reply.

you made me smile (well actually a bit laugh!)... it's been very hard to laugh since the earthquakes and tsunami... I only can laugh when I am with my students, so I really appreciate your fun message)

You know what? some of my students actually can do it, touch their head with their elbow(s)!
I will ask the kids to do it again to take a picture to show you here;)


Yes, I am happy about this job. I like teaching kids, but I hated to work for those greedy Eikaiwa companies... the last one I worked for, they didn't like me to make up funny songs... they just wanted me to take more time to get more and more customers and sell their super boring textbooks and all... so I quit.

well, have a good day RealJames

from RealKylieMole

(...na, I am a fake Kylie Mole. I just love her very very much)

I see...touch A toe...
so... if I say "touch your toe" doesn't make sense?

How about this case?

"Touch your head and Nanami's toe"
makes sense? Nanami is one of the students.

hello
My students are OK. We didn't have tsunami, cos we live in a mountain, but had some earthquakes, so the kids were scared and I was told that some of them can't sleep alone.

oopsie, my students are coming soon, so I have to go:ywave:

I suppose most of my confusion is due to people having ten toes, so touching your toe could be a bit confusing to follow. In this case, either "a" or "your" would work as long as the kids know what it means.

Sorry for the confusion I cause with my answers :/

I see! Yes, now I understand that ! Yes, 5toes x 2 ! yes!

I totally misunderstood !

I wanted to say touch your (5)toe(s) !

mmm I need more study!

Thanks!

Your English is super good. I love it. And yeah, I had this Korean girl at my school who would sound a bit rude but of course it's a language barrier. Sorry about my typing since I know you're trying to be as good as you can. My grammar is weird all over the place when I type since I project my personality more than my knowledge of the English language if you know what I mean.

*plooka plooka*

hi Rinai,
Is my English super good???
Thanks, but I know there are heaps of things I need to learn...
Learning foreign languages is fun, but hard!

"hop" and "jump" ?
 

What's the difference between HOP and JUMP?

hop is like... small jump?

How should I say when I want the kids to hop like a bunny?

"Put your hands on your head and hop hop hop" makes sense?
Can I use "then" instead of "and"?

If I say jump jump jump... then you would do the diffrent action?

LOL I find the title quite funny! Strict and serious teachers! What,do you want like a fussy sad old person?! :p It's a joke,it's a joke.

Exactly.

In this context, either would work. The only difference I can think of is if you want to teach both words eventually, and how they can be used in different situations to mean almost the same thing.

I would take jumps, which are bigger than hops. However, even "jump" can have different meanings in context. English frequently doesn't make much sense at all :P

Yup! You could use "and" or "then". Heck, you could use "and then" too ;)

Hmm, if you told a child to jump or hop the actions would probably be pretty similar. In hopping (especially like "a bunny"), you bend your knees/squat more than you do when just jumping. And yeah, "hop" is considered a funner word than jump.

hahaha,
a fussy and sad old guy... yeah he's just my type;)

Super good! Well, yeah languages are very fun to learn but can also be very challenging. I'm learning the hard way right now. >< -Cry cry- But good luck!

*plooka plooka*

right...

what do you think about "phonics" thing ?

I heard there are people trying to "FIX" the irregular words:
like...
eight ---> eite

Do you think it's a good idea?

Heh. There's always the old joke:

"Huked onn fonix wurked fer mee."

It's meant to show that completely relying on one method of learning isn't a wise idea. However, taking some knowledge from it and other ways of learning (like practical experience) can be effective.

It's been over 20 years since I took French language classes in junior high school and I can still recognize the occasional word or phrase. Having bilingual packaging on consumer items keeps many words or phrases fresh in a person's mind.

And at the risk of drawing ire from other forum members, listening to unsubtitled anime has increased my ability to pick out certain words in isolation. But it takes watching the same episode subtitled in English to show there's still a lot of words and phrases I couldn't pick up the first time.

I see.

What's "HECK" ?

I see...
Thanks:)

oh, how about なわとび！

jump rope, skipping rope... can I call it hopping rope or hop rope?

and what's the right way to say...

"Let's play rope-jumping!" ? or
"Let's do rope-jumping!" ?
"Let's jump rope!" ?

the problem is, people are too polite to tell you wen ur wrong. i got the same problem. not my teacher though. . .

In this case, it's an emotional expression used to add the third option of using both words "and" and "them" as well as either word by itself.



"Jump rope" works best as it's a widely understood phrase. It's also less awkward to say compared to the other two examples.

Interesting!
Is it like...
Hoocked on phonics worked for me ? yeah?

What do you think the best way for the Japanese kids to learn how to read English?

My students can only come once or twice a week(50mins-100mins) here to study with me. I have students in 3 types.

1) Ones I've been teaching over 2-3 years. They started learning English when they were 3-4 years old (and now they are 5-6 years old)
They can say many words and sentenses like...
No way! It's my turn! Can I see it? Can I have one? Can I have one more cookie? Let's play hide-and-seek! and all that kinds they need/want to say... I didn't teach them spelling much, but only simple phonics sometimes...

But I asked their parents to start reading books at home (Some of them bought the picture books with CDs: Oxford Reading Tree), and also I asked the bigger kids to read along too... then for everyone;) 's surprise, many of the kids find it fun and not too difficult to read English!
I think it's because many of the words they hear from the CDs are familier to them.
These kids want to read books for me... to surprise me.
They really enjoy to see me surprise and say
"wow... I'm surprised! How old are you really? ten? eleven?"
"No, Im 5! hahaha"
(we do this conversation hundreds of times, but they never get bored)
so I'm not really worrid about the kids type(1).

Anyway, well I have students type (2)...
Most of them started studying English when they were 3-4 years, but their former teachers were "flash cards!memorize!repeat after me!no talk back!listen to me and say what I say!" type of teachers. The kids hated to go to their English school, then the parents found me.

These kids were with me for around 2 years now, they also enjoy reading books at home.... but I can see that they don't understand the meanings as well as the kids type (1) do.

Type(3)
They are new... and 10-12 years old.
They are pretty busy with other things like... tennis club, learning piano/violin...abacus school...cram school for math/Japanese/science/social study... and then they come to my school on Friday... 19:20-20:10!
They must be tired by the time they get here...
But their parents are expecting a lot ....they want their children to be able to "speak" in English within a year.

It's funny (actually not funny at all)... There are many many English teachers working as an English teacher at junior high school.... their English skills are worse than me, and also there are many don't-talk-back-just-repeat-after-me teachers make the kids hate studying English...

and there are parents who wants their kids to be fluent in English within a year, by only 50mins x 48 times lessons.



Sorry this story was just my... (mmm...what I should say....)
dictionary said:

chewing the rag
flog the cat ? ?

What's the word for this?
It's not really a complain... but sometimes you just want to say it/tell someone to release things in your head

hope you manage to understand what I'm trying to say!

yeah, too polite, and for some people it's also めんどうくさい(bother or lazy?).
Like my Japanese girl mates who married to an Australian, a Canadian and Americans... their English aren't very good, they said their husbands never correct them. (And.... their husbands speak like a girl... when they talk to me in Japanese. you know why right?)

any artist,actor,musician here? I need your help!
 

Some Japanese musicians are making a "music dictionary" or something (I don't know the details), one of them asked me how you guys call こけらおとし in English.
こけらおとし　means the (formal) opening of a new theater　
こけらおとし【柿落とし】 を英語で表現すると - Yahoo!辞書

actually they are looking for a word or 2 to explain こけらおとし.
They want to know if there is any special "word" (slang? Jargon?)used by artist/singers/musicians/actors.

If not then can we say like...
the first perfomance of the new theater,
the first show at the new theater,
the first play of the new theater
the first concert of the new hall.
..... like that???

I'm not involved in the performing arts, so I don't know of any special jargon for a formal theater opening. However, you could say "the inauguration of a theater" to refer to its formal opening, since "inauguration" is a general term used for formal openings or beginnings.

You could, though I would use "at" or "in" instead of "of". (To me, using "of" makes it sound too much like the theater is itself an active entity, rather than just a location where performances take place.) However, those expressions mean simply what they say, the first performance at that location. A formal opening ceremony, which seems to be what the word you're talking about means, is different from a performance.

I don't know if I translate it well in English, but in my language is something as Theater Opening Gala, this is the formal form.

Thank you colinHowell!!

I'm going to copy your message and email them.

"inauguration" mmm...how do you pronounce it??

I see. I thought so too. "of" was used in the online Japanese-English dictionary... but I didn't know how to use "of" in this situation, so a bit confusing...
right. I actually don't know the meaning of the Japanese word こけらおとし very well, cos I don't really go to the theater... almost at all.

The music people I met, they are rooooooolly musicky people (musicky makes any sense? maybe not... I just made it up), I mean they are the professionals, and we had a chat at a Arabic Coffee shop the other night... they were talking about many kind of guiter things... and it's sounds and all that..... they were talking in Japanese, but I didnt understand most of it!
I was talking about how I teach kids... some of the kids really love and enjoy making up songs with me. usually very silly songs, but one of the music person told me that what I do (making silly songs with the kids) could be a big thing.He said that I should record it!

Anyway, thank you very much! I thought no one would be interested in my question.

Thank you again, and have a lovely day!!

"gala" mmm intereting word!
I will tell them your information too!

Thank you very much!

Have a good day:ywave:

sorry, double posting by mistake

Anime fan people! can you tell me the names of these?
 

Hello again,

I've got these stamps the other day, but I have no idea what they are!

We are going to have a charity market next week, and I will be there selling stuff... so I need to know what we are selling !!!

Can anyone tell me the names of these characters and the title of the anime please?