Recent thing that was memorable was that we learnt symbols and abbreviations which are useful for quick note-taking. I'd thought it cool so far because it's used by secretaries. I was happy to learn that. Basically we do dictation and practice for note-taking in this class. But probably we're going to start preparing for presentation from next time.

In this class, we're preparing for debate/ discussion individually. We can choose whatever topic. Mine will be about cram school. I will do some research and in debate, I am going to show the background, examples and my opinion for that in the introduction and to ask question about their opinion of it to get everyone to feel included.

Now we are doing group work and preparing for presentation about suicide. Our group has various people who come from Germany, NZ, Japan (me) and Samoa. I was a bit surprised that I was insightful about why Japanese suicide rate is so high. It is because for example hierarchy society (先輩後輩関係、敬語), overpopulation in such a small area, packed train, character (perfectionist, not good at saying NO), overworking which results from non-effective meeting and so on. We shared those kinds of reasons respectively and posted reflection on our blog.

We had an essay writing as an assessment. I struggled with it because it was my debut of writing essay. I made lots of mistakes and two of my flatmates give their hands for me and corrected me. I realized how bad I was in formal writing. I learnt it must follow all the required things by teacher and be well-organized and clearly understood. This was a good experience ever.