While correcting the students’ journals today, I came across the entry ‘…and I really love LADOKURIFU...’ At first glance it may not seem obvious who this is, but once you read it aloud it becomes clear that the student was trying to spell ‘RADCLIFFE’. That’s the kind of English spelling you get when students learn English using katakana..!!

It reminds me of when I first arrived in Japan, and thought that katakana (phonetic alphabet used for foreign words brought into the Japanese language) might be the most useful of the three alphabets to learn first.

I quickly realized that once you read the word in katakana, you then still had to guess at what the English equivalent is. For example: a – i – su – ku – ri – mu = ...........

That’s right! Ice cream!

It used to take me a while to verbalize each sound, and once I did, I’d have to figure out what it might correspond to in English...

After school, we had a small get-together at Miyamoto sensei's place where we made temakizushi together. It was a very nice evening!