Teaching Anime

This is definitely a first for me. I like finding new and different ways to challenge my students. Both in the forms I use for my lessons as well as the actual content. I know that some of my students like anime, but a vast majority most likely doesn’t interact with the medium at all. My second years (ages ranging from 13 to 15) have a listening and watching test coming up in a couple of weeks. We’ve been practicing for this test a little bit and they seem to be poorly motivated to interact with the practice material. It is pretty boring standardized stuff after all. Since we have some extra room in the curriculum, I wanted to take a lesson where we watch an episode of anime with the class and see how much they can understand. Of course, this would have to be dubbed, which I’m not used to, but dubs are no longer the neglected child they once were, many years ago. Now all I needed was to pick a show to watch.

I initially veered towards Frieren. Frieren is deep, thought provoking, hauntingly beautiful and witty. It’s also not the best and easiest entry into anime as a medium. It’s slow, it requires you to think quite a bit and the first episode – good as it is – doesn’t stand on its own as well as the anime I ended up picking. It still very much feels like I’m taking a plunge into the deep end but I believe the first episode of The Apothecary Diaries to have everything you need for a self-contained story. The premise is simple and the visuals of Maomao’s kidnapping are clear to everyone, even if you can’t follow along with the English. The story is self-contained and although there are some mature themes present in the first episode, none of it is inappropriate for teenagers. As a matter of fact, they are the target demographic for this show.

So now a little peek behind the curtain, how am I going to teach this anime to them as a lesson. Their actual test consists of two parts, the video part being a video with pauses to let the students answer a question. The questions are in order and there’s a pause – with an annoying beep – to mark where you are at in the test. I’m only going to pause every few exercises so as to keep it from getting too interruptive. I’ll tell them ahead of time how many exercises I expect them to answer before the first pause. Speaking of the exercises, a majority of them will be multiple choice. That’s what they get in the test itself too, so it only makes sense to practice appropriately. I’ll include the actual assignment below for if you happen to be an ESL teacher teaching listening skills to this particular age range. But depending on the reflection part of this post – which is coming up next and which I’ll write after teaching – this might be a scrapped lesson. If it was a disaster, you won’t even see this post at all, but if it just wasn’t very successful I’ll let you hear about it at least. 

So, now that the lessons are all done, let’s talk about how it went. I put a questionnaire about what they thought about the assignment on the back and had them hand it in. That is the easiest way to get information after all. Right off the bat, two things stand out to me. The first class was not very motivated to do listening practice and this was reflected in their lack of attention during the video. Half the kids were distracted by other things and only a few students seemed to really care what was going on. From those students, a few did say they liked it, but most of the kids didn’t care for it much at all. I didn’t ask if they would prefer this over the coursebook’s own material, perhaps I should have clarified that. It could very well be that they prefer that material, or that they just don’t like listening practice at all. I do reckon part of it was definitely that they didn’t like the video all that much. 

Hello, it’s future Nick here. I’m writing the rest of this post after I’ve finished teaching it to all three of my classes and read through their feedback. It gives me a pretty consistent insight. There are a few students in total who really seemed to like it, some even saying they loved it. That’s good, I didn’t bore every single one of my students to death. Having said that, I don’t think this lesson idea was a success. A vast majority of students didn’t like the video at all and although they don’t like listening practice in general, if it’s something like this, which is different from the standard they learn, it needs to really add something. I don’t think that’s the case here, so it’ll be a one and done for me. I did have one student comment that it would have gone better if we watched the first episode of Jujutsu Kaisen in class, but somehow I don’t think he’s quite right. Anyway, I’m going to go back to the drawing board. Unfortunately for the time being I’ll just use the provided material from the school which is incredibly boring for everyone involved, but requires much less prep time than this. I’ll still include the exercise itself down below for those curious, as well as the feedback form I had my students fill in after the assignment. Tomorrow I’ll have them fill in the blanks in Counting Crow’s (and originally Joni Mitchell) fantastic Big Yellow Taxi. That’ll go over better I think. Thanks for reading! 

1. Maomao’s father tells her to be careful, why is that?
   1. There are wild bears in the area.
   2. People are being kidnapped lately.
   3. The weather is going to be dangerous

2. What does the visitor call Pairin?
   1. One of the three princesses of the Verdigris House
   2. One of the three angels of the the Verdigris House
   3. One of the three beauties of the Verdigris House

3. Which people are allowed in the rear palace?
   1. Everyone who works for the emperor
   2. Women, loyal men and the emperor himself
   3. The emperor himself, women and eunuchs

4. What is a eunuch?

5. Why are there rumors of a curse in the rear palace?
   1. People are disappearing mysteriously.
   2. The emperor’s heirs are dying.
   3. Someone saw a ghost.

6. After figuring out what is happening, Maomao needs something to write with, why?
   1. To write a letter to her father about the illness.
   2. To write in her diary.
   3. To write to the two concubines to tell them why their children are ill.

7. The man who summons the serving girls is called Jinshi. What is his job?
   1. Emperor
   2. Manager
   3. Detective

8. What skill does Maomao have that Jinshi uses to trick her?

9. What ended up being the reason that the babies got ill?
   1. The white face powder the concubines were using.
   2. The food they were given.
   3. The poisonous flowers that were in their bedrooms

10. Who does Maomao become a lady-in-waiting for?
    1. The emperor
    2. Concubine Lihua
    3. Concubine Gyokuyo

Name: Class:

What did you think about the video?

1. I loved it
2. I liked it
3. I thought it was alright
4. I didn’t like it all that much
5. I disliked it

How difficult was this video?

1. Easy
2. Not very difficult
3. A bit difficult at times
4. Quite difficult
5. I didn’t understand much of it

Do you want more listening practice for the upcoming test?

1. Yes, I still need more practice
2. A little bit of practice would be nice
3. I don’t really need any practice
4. I’m super confident in my listening skills