by Whitey | Feb 8, 2008 | Ministry News, Weekly Re-Cap
This week, instead a normal re-cap (if there is such a thing), I’m posting my prayer letter, also being sent to my supporters via email.
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Hi everyone,
Sunday night I went to a multi-denominational youth worship gathering, called Heart and Soul, hosted by a local seminary. It was bi-lingual, which was nice, the speaker was good, the band was really good, and there were lots of people there. I met some fellow-expat/missionary-types too. It’s great to see someone taking the incentive to get young people from different denominations together. That’s the kind of unity that the Japanese Church — and Japan — needs.
My first month+ here in Nagoya has been spent focusing on language, getting to know people and generally just settling in — not in hands-on ministry. I have to admit that a part of me found this frustrating, as I wanted to dive right in to ministry right off the bat. But I think Pastor Saoshiro was right in recommending that I take this time to settle in. It takes time to get to know a new group of people, a new city and new church. It takes time to adjust to life in another culture, even if, like me, it’s not your first time there. It’s been an adjustment getting used to going to school, doing homework, and studying again.
Tuesday night Saoshiro-sensei and I chatted about getting me involved in ministry. Soon I’ll start getting plugged in to the life of the church more actively, and that’s something I’m looking forward to.
Here are some things you can be praying about:
- Please pray that God will continue to help build relationships despite the language barrier. And thank Him with me for the friendships I’m building already.
- Pray for my language studies. They’re going well but I have a long way to go. Pray that I’ll be patient and diligent in my studies and that God will help me make more progress.
- Pray for my church — Immanuel Nagoya Church — may we have an effective ministry in Nagoya. Also, there may be some pastoral/leadership transitions in the spring. Pray for God’s will to be done and for a smooth transition period.
- Pray for God’s direction and blessing for my ministry here.
Thanks for your prayers!
by Whitey | Feb 6, 2008 | Thoughts
This week and next I’m continuing my series of writings on Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), using more material taken from assignments I did for my TESL course. Today’s post was written back in mid-December, and is about teacher vs. student talk time in the language classroom. I should add that there’s quite a bit of student talk time in the Japanese class I’m taking now. This is a good thing.
There is a big difference between accuracy and fluency. This is an idea I have thought about frequently during both my private Japanese-language studies and my teaching English course.
I have studied Japanese off and on for a few years now. If tested, I would probably discover that I have a fairly large vocabulary. I also know the basics of Japanese grammar and pronunciation fairly accurately. However, I am far from fluent. In fact, it is a struggle for me to carry on even the most basic of conversations in Japanese.
So what’s missing? It is true that I could (and should) spend a lot more time studying. But probably the thing I need the most is more practice actually using what I already know; I need more talk time. I heard someone point out recently that in real, every day conversations, it’s actually more important to be fluent than it is to be accurate. In other words, getting an idea or message across to the person we’re speaking to should be our concern, rather than making sure we get every word and grammar use exactly right. I think this is true. Of course we should always aim to improve, but real communication can still take place even while we’re still learning. And in the process of trying, failing and trying again, we learn more than we could have without trying at all.
If practice is so important in learning a second language, then in ESL conversation classes it is important that we as teachers give the students ample opportunities to put into practice what we have been teaching them. If we’re going to do this, we need to be willing to talk less. Teacher talk time is important, especially as we introduce new concepts. But without actually putting these new language items to work, students are less likely to remember them when the class is over. If the students do not get talk time in class, they will not improve in their ability to actually communicate in English. This is especially true if we are living in a non-English speaking country, where students don’t get many opportunities to use English in their lives outside the classroom.
For these reasons, I think it is important for teacher talk time to be limited so that student talk time takes up a large part of each lesson. As for an exact ratio, that it would depend on the size of the class. In smaller classes, there can be more teacher-to-student interaction without any students being left out. In larger classes, students will have to talk to each other more and to the teacher less. In either case, though, the teacher should err on the side of speaking less (20-40% of class time). Teacher talk time should always be less than half of the lesson, with that percentage being lower the more students there are.
by Whitey | Jan 25, 2008 | Weekly Re-Cap
This week I…
- Visited a fellow-missionary’s church for their Sunday night “Gospel Cafe” event. Met some cool musician guys and had a good chat with them.
- Biked to class on my new bicycle.
- Podcasted.
- Had a good meeting with my pastor / mentor, Joseph Saoshiro.
- Found a large bookstore and picked up some English-language books on Japan and Japanese (actually that may have been late last week).
- Studied more per day than I’m used to studying per week.
- Suffered a headache or two (which may or may not be related to the above.
- Spent a lot of time at Mr. Donut, because the re-fills are free and I like studying somewhere other than at home.
- Went site-seeing with a couple of guys from the church today. Photos coming soon, I hope.
And that’s a wrap for this week. Maybe next week I’ll have more to say, but for now it’s getting late and I’m tired.
by Whitey | Jan 7, 2008 | Ministry News
If you went looking for new photos in the past couple of days, sorry. I had some uploading trouble, and still seem to be, so for now the Photo page is down. Hopefully I can remedy that soon, though.
In the meantime, a brief update: I’ve enrolled in a part-time Japanese language course at YWCA Nagoya. It seems most schools start their full-time courses in April or October, corresponding to the Japanese school year. So I’m going part-time for now, starting this Wednesday, and when April rolls around will take a full-time course (20-odd hours a week) at either the YWCA or another local language school.
More news soon, I hope. Stay tuned.
