和雄：木村先生の成績のつけかた、どうも納得がいかないな。
よし子：納得がいくように、先生に説明していただいたらどう？
Nattoku ga iku (ikanai)
(Kookoosei-dooshi no kaiwa)
Kazuo: Kimura-sensei no seiseki no tsukekata, doomo nattoku ga ikanai na.
Yoshiko: Nattoku ga iku yoo ni, sensei ni setsumei shite itadaitara do?
(Two high school students)
Kazuo: I just can't understand the way Mr. Kunura works out his grades.
Yoshiko: Why don't you ask him to explain them to you, so that you really understand.
Nattoku ga iku means understanding someone else's thoughts or actions and agreeing with or accepting them.
For schools which operate on a two-term system, September is the month for grades. The university where I teach gives tests in September, after which we have to give grades to our students.
One of the classes I teach is called Japanese Culture, which is aimed at foreign students. There are about 20 students in the class and every time we meet we read Japanese newspaper articles and discuss the stories.
Newspapers are full of difficult kanji, so students from China and Taiwan are at an advantage, while students from other countries are at a disadvantage. They complain, "Why do we have to study in the same class as students who can read kanji? It's like a golf handicap; we're held back right from the start. It's really difficult."
Hajime wa kurasu hensei ni nakanaka nattoku shite kurenai gakusei mo iru (There are some students who at first find it difficult to understand the way the class is organized).
And once they get an idea into their heads, no matter how hard you try to convince them that studying together will be interesting because they'll learn a lot about other people's attitudes, Aite wo nattoku saseru no wa taihen muzukashii (It's extremely difficult to make them understand).
Once classes get started though, and we begin discussing topics such as "China's one-child-per-family rule, and the decreasing birth rate in Japan," the European, African and South American students begin to appreciate the presence of the Chinese and Taiwanese students, and Ko iu kurasu de yokatta to, nattoku shite kureru (They finally accept that this kind of class was good for them).
I decide my students' grades on the basis of their participation in class discussions and the reports that they hand in. Until the end of September we'll be reading interesting newspaper articles, and the students will be writing reports,
but Zen'in ga nattoku suru yo ni seiseki wo tsukeru no wa taihen da (It's hard grading them in such a way that everyone understands).