Week 5

In this class we covered unit 6 , lessons 12 and 13.

Lesson 12 is about offering/ accepting/ refusing hospitality at someone's house which we have covered before. I also picked up on the adjectives and we studied adjectives in a bit more detail, in particular how to use more than one adjective at a time in a sentence. The grammar notes are on BB.
I also gave some extra vocab for describing patterns:
gara - pattern
hanagara - flowery
muji - plain
mizutama - spots

mizutama ga tsuite imasu - it has spots on it
hoshi ga tsuiteimasu - It has stars on it

We also practiced describing things (umbrellas mostly) in the lost property office. Again the sheet for this is on BB.

Lesson 13 was about giving compliments - Mr Smith was lost in admiration at Mr Takahashi's beautiful vase, after listening to this we practiced giving / accepting compliments.

As well as the phrases in the book I gave some extra vocabulary:
moraimono - it was given to me (literally: a received thing)
yasumono - a cheap thing

(Like in English, if someone admires your clothing or accessories, the polite thing is to say something self deprecating)

I have just been playing with this website for listening activities on the internet. http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/lal/japanesemain/ISLPR_listening/ISLPRlistening_frame.html
They are all real bits of spoken Japanese so it can be quite hard to catch what they are saying. The ones recorded in shops are all ultra polite so lots of use of "gozaimasu" and very polite phrases. Have a go and see how you get on. Even if you don't catch every word, see if you can get the gist or the main points.