You completed Cycle 2. おめでとう！(Congratulations!) Please reflect on the cycle. You will write what exercises in your plan that you did, how successful you were in achieving your goals, what difficulties you encountered, etc.
Cycle 3 is the last cycle of PE in this semester. Think what aspects in your pronunciation/speaking/listening you want to improve more by the end of this semester. Then, write your goals to improve your pronunciation (focusing on prosody), speaking and listening. Also, write concrete activities to achieve these goals.

I feel that this Cycle I have started encountering some minor issues with my usage of pitch, particularly at the end of the sentences. Usually, I feel that I can more or less grasp the intonation intuitively, but I felt that particularly with the usage of the dictionary form, I was beginning to have some trouble with the pitch at the end of the questions. Also, I have realized that my ability to speak Japanese on the spot when I answer questions is rather slow, and I feel that I can vastly improve this in the next cycle. Unfortunately, I was unable to do the anime shadowing exercises that I had planned for this Cycle. However, my other goals, I felt were reasonably well met.

I feel that as always, my listening skills are relatively well off, and as such don't require much practice from my input. However, my pronunciation is going to have to get a little better, especially with respect to the pitch endings of questions with the dictionary form. My speaking is a little too halting for my taste, and I'm going to definitely try to get comfortable just answering questions without too much of a break between responses. In order to accomplish these goals, I'm going to shadow at least twice or three times anime so that I can get a sense of what the natural way of saying a lot of common phrases is. As far as speaking, I recently discovered my hall mate speaks fluent japanese, so I've been talking with her in Japanese, and I feel like that's a significant help towards my fluency and comfortableness with the language.

Goals for Cycle 2

My goals for this Cycle are going to focus primarily on the pronunciation of Japanese words. I seem to have fluency with general conversational skills, but I've recently noticed a lack of consistency with my ending of sentences occasionally having an irregular ending - Shibata-sensei noticed as much on my oral exam, and I'm pretty sure that she's right. Also, I'm not quite settled with the pronunciation of some japanese words, particularly those with many moras. As a result, I'm just going to have to pay a lot more attention to the way the words are written in the book with the intonation bars overhead. I'm usually good at guessing the intonations based on feeling, but I think I'm going to have to pay a lot more attention now. As far as getting the intonations correctly, I'm going to just listen to a lot more of songs and do more extra shadowing with some anime. I think as far as listening goes, I'm pretty good - although I might start to watch some anime raw (without subtitles) to test how I'm going with anime.

Emoticons Continued.

Table flip: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Alarmed table flip: (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻
Angry table flip: (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
Putting the table back: ┬──┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)
Whut: ¬_¬
R u srs/rlly: ಠ_ಠ
zzzzzz: (￣。￣)～ｚｚｚ
Le drool: °٢°
Butterfly: Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
Innocent: ʘ‿ʘ
sjfsjl: (°ロ°)☝
Oh joy: ಥ⌣ಥ
Kawaii kawaii: (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ
Yay~: ヽ(゜∇゜)ノ
Wat: (″･ิ_･ิ)っ
WhAt WAs ThAT: ∑(゜Д゜;)
Win: (☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞
Dog 1: •ᴥ•
Dog 2: ●ᴥ●
Dog 3: ☻ᴥ☻
Me is friendly: (´･ω･`)
: 3:<`∀´>
Wae: <丶´Д｀>
Wae 2: （ ；´Д｀）
Happy: ∧∧
Idek: ┐('～`；)┌
MY OVARIES: (*´Д`)ﾊｧﾊｧ
Woah..: ( ﾟдﾟ)
Le tear: （ つ Д ｀）
Angel: ☜(⌒▽⌒)☞
SPARKLEZZZZ: (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Bombs: ( ・_・)ノ⌒●~*

とても可愛いですね。

Self-Reflection

You completed Cycle 1. おめでとう！(Congratulations!) Please reflect on the cycle. You will write what exercises in your plan that you did, how successful you were in achieving your goals, what difficulties you encountered, etc.
You just took the midterm oral exam. Please self-evaluate your performance of the oral exam in terms of your language use, pronunciation, fluency, communication skills, etc. What positive aspects did you have in your performance? What points do you think you need to improve?
You may write the statement in English or/and in Japanese.

I felt reasonably accomplished with my finishing of the goals that I set for myself, considering that I did in fact get a chance to do the anime shadowing that I had intended to do. Considering that Shibata-sensei even told me that it was a very hard passage to shadow, I felt that I was very much satisfied with the results that came as a result of it. There were no real difficulties that I encountered in my fulfilling of the goals this cycle, and I truly feel that my fluency in the language improved as a result. Speaking of which, the oral exam, I think went very very well! ^_^ My language use was fairly accurate, although we did go off the script quite a bit considering that Shibata-sensei pulled a fast one on us and changed the topic to something entirely different. But I felt that we recovered very well as a result of it. ~<. But here's to a great second cycle!

-Yammy

ぼくのしゅまつ

せんしゅまつぼくのちちとははがきました。ぼくたちわ鍼治療にいきました。ぼくの足首わいたいです。でも、いまわ痛くない。でも、いまわ痛くない。大丈夫です！

私のゴル

My goals for this pronunciation exercise are to become significantly more fluent in my speech, and to be able to pronounce particular phrases or sounds that fairly difficult for me, like "r" and the unvoiced consonants, with more technique and correctness. I also hope to be able to learn to use the proper pitches and intonations naturally that a native speaker would use in their speech.

To accomplish these goals, I am going to continue with the multiple shadowing exercises, as well as attempt the tongue twisters (I will get level 3!). As I watch anime frequently, I will memorize at least a couple of my more favorite lines from the anime that I love and learn the proper intuitions and pronunciations for all of them. Finally, as I listen to a great deal of Japanese music, I intend to start to sing along to those songs (alone, of course) in an attempt to learn how they pronounce the words currently.

がんばれ！

かおもじ

I'm actually not a stranger to the many Japanese emoticons that we were exposed to today - I've actually seen quite a number of them online before, with stuff like this:

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

(́一◞౪◟一‵)

ლ(́ಢ.◞౪◟ಢ‵ლ)

( ́ ◕◞ε◟◕`)

(́≖◞౪◟≖‵)

I think they're adorable.

とてもかわいだよ〜

でも、How on earth did people come up with the original ideas for these かおもじ?!

わからない。。。