Kimi no na wa (Your Name) - a film review

'Your Name' is a film that you must see. It was directed by Matoko Shinkai, a popular animation
movie director. It stars no one because it is an animation film. This film should win the Japanese Academy Prize for Best Animation film.

This contemporary film is set in Tokyo and Hide-Takeyama, in rural Gifu.

The film is about two high school students, a boy called Taki and a girl called Mitsuha. They had never met each other, but they started to reverse roles in their dreams. They come to know each other, and one day Taki decides to see her, but she wasn't there...

I totally recommend 'Your Name'. The animation is spectacular and it makes you laugh a lot. The story is a bit complicated, thus I would recommend you watch it twice. The soundtrack was made by a Japanese popular rock band 'Radwimps', and it is captivating.

Posted for....Yuya

Super Simple Songs YouTube Channel Trailer

As many parents of our learners will know, we like to use a lot of songs here at Luna. We particularly love Super Simple Songs and rate them very highly...why not engage at home with your children + animation?!

How did Jim find out about SSS? At an ETJ Bookfair in Tokyo several years ago, Rob Habbick of course, introduced him to Devon Thagard.

A new coach for Ronaldo & Kuyt?

Kunpei & Takuro present a half-way-line chat between Cristiano Ronaldo & Dirk Kuyt, adapted from our OUP Story Tree graded reader "The return of the cleaning ladies".

Guided writing from graded reading - watch the movie!

Yuta is a spacedude
by: lunajim

Back from space, Yuta describes his planet

Yuta & Jim worked up this conversation from his Red Planet graded reader...good job, I think?!

Graded readers to great storytellers!

Well done Haruka & Ayaka for creating your own inter-stellar movie!

Spicing up the dialogue with returnees - slow it down!

Apologies about the accent with the character one the left (interviewer); memo to self = preview before publishing (and avoid accents on Xtranormal - they are thick & heavy).

Summer Holiday interview
by: lunajim
Hana & Suzu mash it up in Luna's YLE classsroom

My returnees can fly through a conversation on everyday topics in a very haphazard and blazee attitude; quickly, relevantly, but with very little thought/development beyond answering the question as fast as possible. That leaves me scrabbling to diagnose 'what happened' & sourcing more material  to develop the conversation...bored students, frustrated teacher, progress little. In flying through their exchanges my students realise their goal of saying "finished" as quickly as possible; how often do you say thay in a meeting, phone call or chatting with granny?

Kids love cartoons, and using the keyboard is a profound playing leveller - certainly in Japan; few kids here are fluent typists. This inevitably slows things down - mini aim - so that we can focus on getting the nuts & bolts right. Not necessarilly spelling for a conversation (but we are typing it so why not in the process of making sure we get the words in the right order?)

My kids also have a habit of clock watching (in this class); in this situation the clock is on my side the entire time. The conversation they are working up was in note form from last week, and they want to stretch 'my' time into an hour. So, short ansers won't achieve that goal - make the answers longer/detailed! In doing this, also means the director can add more movement/camera shifts/noises/poses etc. Students edit each other much more readily than softly softly teacher, so we have peer learning/teaching going on too (much more likely to take note than to me). As we get towards the top of the hour there's a 'hurry up' factor & a desire to see the finished product.

The xtranormal site needs a minute or three to 'cook' i.e. render the video...you'll have to wait until next week to see it in class :)  Oh, the antici----pation!