2008年11月3日月曜日

Everyone needs encouragement to overcome difficulties

Konnichiwa!

I have seen many of you have written comments to blogs of students from other universities and at the same time, many of you have already received comments from students from other universities. I am glad that you guys enjoy getting to know each other and nurturing friendship in the community of this project. That is the main purpose of this project! Let's make friends in other part of the world by writing about yourself and visiting their blogs, using our common language, Japanese.

Here, let me discuss with you what we should write as a comment on articles in someone's blog. The other day, I found a student in our class left a comment to a student from other university, which I think is not very appropriate, at least at this moment. In the comment the student pointed out every single mistake in the person's article and kindly warned her to check her Japanese before she posts it. This student might have done that from kindness, to improve the person's Japanese. But I think we should ask ourselves before posting our comment how the blog's writer will feel when s/he reads the comment. The student who wrote that comment might say "I would appreciate if someone correct my Japanese." However, remember our main purpose for writing blogs in this project is to "make friends." Have your relationship with the writer grown enough to assume that s/he won't mind your correction in the public space? Maybe we should ask ourselves before posting a comment to someone's blog, "do I myself want to receive such a comment? Isn't what I am writing going to embarrass the writer?

Recently during the blog activiy, I reminded you to show to your classmate your article before posting it, in order for you to realize any mistakes or any unclear parts to others in what you have written. This is becuase it is quite often difficult, if by ourselves, to realize what is not clear to others and how to improve it to make our thoughts understood well by others. That is why I think "peer-editing" is necessary. This process should be done before the article is posted. Once it is posted, I think we should exchange our idea mainly on the content, not on mistakes.

We have just started learning this language. We need encouragement from others to move on. We need positive interaction among each other. I think we should keep that in mind when we do this activity. I am waiting for your comment on this issue.

3 件のコメント:

小白 さんのコメント...

こにちわ、せんせい。

I still left 3 papers to go through including japanese paper. Thats why i have time to browse through blogs.
Regarding this issue, I agree with sensei. This is because when someone receive some "negative" comments from others, i dare to say surely is not a nice feeling to look at those comments especially that fellow commented on your sentences structure and grammatical errors in japanese sentences.
Well..in a positive way we can think that is like a motivation can "push" us to improve and learn hard in japanese.
But try to think back the feeling the writter who received those comments? It is definitely a bit frustrated with those comments.(e.g: I work so hard on it but got these kind of comments?)
Actually we need lots of encouragement and preparation to write out a blog in japanese, this is because we just learned japanese about 3 months++. We can't compare students who just learned for 3 months to those students might as well learned it for years. It is normal grammatical errors will occur because we arrange and do the sentences by our own efforts. But not simple use translator tools to do all sentences in a propriate way.
Therefore, respect peoples' feeling and have the liberation first before u take any action.
(This is my own opinion only. I hope it would not offend anyone.)

myrika さんのコメント...

Elizabethさん

テストべんきょういそがしい中、コメントありがとう!
I am glad that you think about this issue from the blog's writer's point of view. Hope we can have more personal and meaningful interactions with members, ya?

小白 さんのコメント...

はい、せんせい!
好いですよ!