Spanish 2: College in the High School

Earn 5 college credits simply for completing Spanish 2 with Sr. Anderson!

Everett Community College and Arlington High School collaborate to offer college credit opportunities at a huge discount. Apply for admission, register for &SPAN122 under my name, and pay $198 to EvCC. (Normally, a course such as this would cost over $500 at EvCC!).

Registration Deadline is November 14, 2014.

FOLLOW THESE STEPS TO SIGN UP:

1) Apply for Admissions (WA-State Colleges Application, specify EvCC).
2) Register and Pay for the Course

*** There is no COMPASS TEST required for Spanish 2 and up. ***

CONTACT FOR QUESTIONS:

EMAIL: CollegeinHS@everettcc.edu
PHONE: 425-267-0150

Bonus Opportunities for September

Go to a pre-approved community event and report back on it in your target language (either Spanish or Japanese) in order to earn bonus points. These points go towards your participation grade (40% of overall grade).

Eligible Events and Activities:

• Home Football Game at AHS (Fri., 9/19)
• Puyallup Fair
• Home Soccer Game at AHS (Thurs., 9/25)
• Home Volleyball Game at AHS (Mon., 9/22)

(You may bring in up to two tissue boxes for bonus points as well!)

Got other ideas? Bring 'em to the discussion in class (let us know what's happening)!

Website: Kana Stroke Order, Counters, and More!

Resources for practicing Hiragana and Katakana Stroke Order, Kanji, Numbers and Counters, and more! Check it out!

--> http://www.umich.edu/~umichjlp/

Materiales ／ 資料（しりよう）

FOR FRIDAY, SEPT. 5, PLEASE HAVE THE FOLLOWING MATERIALS WITH YOU:

- Binder (1.5 to 2 inches)
- 10 pencils
- 3 red pens
- 3 black pens
- 2 erasers
- 100 sheets of paper (in binder)

Binder is graded and is intended to be used solely for your Foreign Language materials.

Japanese Starter Kit

My students in Japanese 1 are welcome to download the following starter kit. Its contents are listed below, along with some notes for use. NOTE: You will be given hard copies of most documents in class on the 3rd of September.

{{{ GET THE KIT }}}

STARTER KIT CONTENTS:

• Blank Kanji & Kana Writing Practice Sheet
• Combo Hiragana and Katakana Chart
• Complete Hiragana Chart with Pictures
• 4 Japanese Radio Stations: Use VLC Media Player to open these.
• Hiragana and Their Respective Kanji of Origin
• Hiragana Writing Practice Sheets with Stroke Order
• Important and Common Student Questions in Japanese
• Japanese Alphabet Song - Hiragana/Katakana (use VLC Media Player)
• Plain Hiragana (Large Characters)
• Textfugu Hiragana Chart with Dakuten and Combinations

Un recuerdo de Ecuador

Mi esposa y yo fuimos a Ecuador durante las vacaciones del verano este año. ¡Tengo tantos cuentos para contarles...!

Un iman de Ecuador

今年の日本語１の教科書が着きました！

みんなの日本語　MINNA NO NIHONGO

Neurogenesis and Rational Decision Making

SUMMARY: Learning a new language encourages your brain to grow. Also, thinking in and making a decision using a new language helps you to make better decisions.

Learning a language makes your brain grow:

Language learning makes the brain grow, Swedish study suggests

At the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy, young recruits learn a new language at a very fast pace. By measuring their brains before and after the language training, a group of researchers has had an almost unique opportunity to observe what happens to the brain when we learn a new language in a short period of time. 

Learning a language allows you to better analyze risks and rewards and set a more desirable course of action for yourself:

Thinking in foreign language makes decisions more rational

...[R]esearchers believe a second language provides a useful cognitive distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and reducing unthinking, emotional reaction.

You might think that the decisions you make in a foreign language don't differ from those made in your native language. However...

"It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases," wrote Keysar’s team.

TL;DR: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases, allowing you to make more rational and less reactionary choices.

6 Prototypical Sentences Needed to Parse a New Language

Here are 6 sentences. These basic sentences incorporate a wide variety of grammatical structures, such as possessives, indirect objects, gender, adjectives, subject-verb agreement, and so on. A lot of information is conveyed by such simple words as "to" and "it". They may seem quite simple and uninspiring in English, but ask yourself if you can express these sentences in Spanish or Japanese (etc.).

If you can express these in your target language accurately, you are certainly ahead of the game in language learning. You have established a good base level of grammatical understanding. This one of our main goals at AHS in Year 1 and Year 2 of World Language classes.

1. The apple is red.
2. It is John’s apple.
3. I give John the apple.
4. We give him the apple.
5. He gives it to John.
6. She gives it to him.

Using prototypical sentences you can greatly accelerate your language learning. Read more on this on Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Work Week: How to Learn But Not Master Any Language in 1 Hour

Two Bonus Sentences to Try Out -- These are litmus tests for Auxiliary Verbs (like to be and to have) in the target language:

• I must give it to him.
• I want to give it to her.

Can you translate these as well?

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Additional Resources:

• How do you become fluent in 11 languages? (Amazing video)
• 7 Types of Sentence Fragments and How to Use Them (Multi-language grammar guide)

Welcome back!

初めまして。私はアンダーソンアダムです。あなたの新しい日本語の先生です。外国語や言語学を８年間ぐらい教えていますが、私はここ、アルリングトンHIGH SCHOOLで二年目に入っているところです。今年の学校の始まりにずっと楽しみにしていましたよ！色々なことをあなた達に聞いたり、話したりしたいんですが、まずは、まあ、夏休みがまだ終わっていないので、ちょっとゆっくり、簡単なことで始めたら、どうですか。

このベーシクな質問を読んでみてください。「興味と暇があるならば」という気持ちで聞きます。でも、ここで知らせたいのは今年中この質問を何回も聞きます！それでは、これを「夏休みのボーナス宿題」と言ってもいいです。（出来たら、教えてください。）

１　お名前は何ですか。
２　ご出身はどこですか。
３　何歳ですか。
４　何人家族ですか。
５　なぜ日本語を勉強しようと思ったんですか。
６　趣味ありますか。なんですか。
７　夏休みはどうでしたか。（一つの経験について話してもらいます。）

では、よろしくお願いします！
そうして今年頑張りましょう！

〜

Bueno, mis estudiantes. El verano casi se acaba. ¡Qué lástima!

Espero verles todos listos y despiertos el 3 de septiembre, ¿ok?

Para los que no me conozcan, siento no haberme introducido.

Yo me llamo Sr. Anderson. Encantado de conocerte.

Pués, díme, ¿Cómo estás hoy este día 17 de agosto?

Espero que estén divirtiéndose afuera, chicos.

 〜

Ah, casi se me olvidó mencionárselo: Los materiales (requeridos) para mi clase de español este año 2014-2015 consisten de lo siguiente:

1. Un cuaderno de 1.5 - 2 pulgadas.
2. 10 o más lápices
3. 3 bolígrafos negros
4. 3 bolígrafos rojos
5. 2 borradores
6. 100 hojas de papel
7. Agua u otra bebida que te guste (con tal de que esté contenido en una botella o un termo del cual no se derramará.)
8. Un cuento para contarme (¿Qué hiciste durante las vacaciones del verano?)

Por favor traigan todos estos materiales para la primera semana de la escuela. ¡Se lo agradezco!

Por se acaso algunos de ustedes tienen estas cosas completamente listas para el primer día de la escuela, sepan que pueden recibir puntos bonus si me enseñan todo al entrar en la clase el 3 de septiembre.

Bueno, pues, ya está. ¡Que disfruten de las vacaciones que les quedan!

¡Hasta luego, chicos!