“Winter is coming.” -John Snow
This may be tough at first, but we’ll slowly work our way up from simple to more complicated, so do your best to understand as much as you can as you move forward. First, let’s start with some translating of the first half of these kinds of sentences. Convert them to Japanese:
When I was a student
学生だった時…
When I was a teacher
先生だった時…
When I am a techer
先生の時に…
When I was pretty
きれいだった時…
When I eat sushi
すしを食べる時…
After I ate chicken
チキンを食べた時…
When I go to New York
ニューヨークに行く時に…
After I went to New York
ニューヨークに行った時に…
How was that? So far so good? Alright, now I’m going to give you a prompt in Japanese. I want you to finish the sentences yourself. Make sure you know what your creation means as well as how to say it.
先生だった時…
学生だった時…
安かった時…
安い時…
便利な時…
東京に行く時…
京都に行った時…
ビールを飲む時…
ビールを飲んだ時…
ブラッドピットを見た時…
So, the question here is… “did I get things right?” Well, this won’t exactly answer that question, but it will get you pretty close.
Write a journal entry using these grammar points. I want a separate one each for nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Make the subject of each post be about each of these things. For example:
Nouns: “When I was a student”
Adjectives: “When I am sad”, “When I am happy”
Verbs: “When I go to school”, “When I eat dinner”, “When I wax my pet narwhal”
Of course, come up with your own subjects for these. Spread what you write out over a day or two so you can use corrections from the first one on the second one and the second one on the third one. This will get you used to applying corrections from the past to the future.
Bonus: Use some sort of “time” grammar in each. Shouldn’t be too big of a stretch.
After you’re done with that you’re done with this chapter! How splendid. “Time” to move on.