by Whitey | Oct 10, 2008 | Weekly Re-Cap
I’m going away on Sunday and Monday, to Hamamatsu. Hopefully I’ll have some fun stories or pictures or something to share. In the meantime, here’s a video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSKzouakm0w&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]
Ice Sculpting Contest in Nagoya, Japan. Specifically at Oasis 21. I came upon it after leaving Starbucks and shot some video on my cell phone. Probably the video quality doesn’t do it justice, but it was pretty impressive in person.
Thanks to those who commented on the previous post. Feel free to add your two cents if you haven’t already, and maybe I’ll come back to it with a follow-up sometime. For the record, I’m not worried about my future or anything; just curious to see how things will all pan out for us all, economically, and what that means for people like me.
I have been feeling a bit de-motivated, tired and distracted the past couple of days, though. I think I just need to re-adjust to school again and get back into a groove. Sometimes vacations don’t seem worth it. Anyway, prayers are appreciated; it’s going to be a busy next couple of weeks.
See you next week. That’s a wrap for now.
by Whitey | May 24, 2008 | Weekly Re-Cap
It’s Saturday morning, and I’m taking it slow and easy. It’s been a full week, and it seems I’ve not spent a lot of time at home. Or when I was home I was studying. So today I’m staying in. All day. It’ll be nice to relax, but I’ve also got housecleaning and blogging to do. So here’s the blogging — a look back at some of what kept me so busy this week:
1. School — We’re getting into the stuff I’m not as familiar with. I also have some catching up to do on my vocabulary. You can say a lot with just basic grammar, but you need the vocabulary to plug into it.
2. English Bible study — Monday I met with my student this week for the first time in a while. We’ll be making some minor changes to the structure of our lessons to help him get more out of it. And to help me get more out of it, too, as he’s paying me by helping me with my Japanese. We’re planning to each do some writing (journaling) in the target language and then go over it when we get together. We’ll still be working our way through the book of Mark, too.
3. Tuesday the Watoto Children’s Choir was in town. Wow.
4. Wednesday I finally met my “boss” — GP Asia area director Romy Caringal. I took the day off of school to host him, show him around, introduce him to people, and get him to the airport on time. It was a good but busy day.
5. Thursday I had to stay late after class to take the test I’d missed on Wednesday. I think I did okay. I also had extra homework, of course.
6. Yesterday afternoon I met up with a friend to go see the new Chronicles of Narnia movie, Prince Caspian. I thought it was pretty good, and overall a good adaptation of the book. I didn’t think it was as good as the first movie, though, and it felt like they changed more from the book while at the same time not explaining a few things as well.
7. After the movie my friend and I went to the home of a family from our church, where several of us gathered for a dinner party. It was a good time, but with so much Japanese it was tiring too, and of course I missed a lot of the conversation. Still, it’s good to be building relationships here and being made to feel a part of things.
And that’s a wrap for another week. Happy weekend, wherever you are.
by Whitey | Nov 14, 2007 | Thoughts
The following article is from a paper I wrote for my Teaching English as a Second Language course. It’s based on the interview I did a while back, which I also used for my podcast. The focus of the paper is, of course, on language learning.
Haruka Kudo comes from Saitama (near Tokyo), Japan but has been living in Fredericton, New Brunswick since 2002. She originally came to Canada to study journalism, graduating last year from Saint Thomas University, but liked Fredericton so much she decided to stay. Haruka now works for the Multicultural Association in downtown Fredericton.
Recently, Haruka and I had the opportunity to sit down at a local coffee shop and talk about her experiences learning English. She told me that speaking English was one of the biggest adjustments she faced when she first came to Canada. Like most young Japanese, she had taken English in school, from junior high through high school. In Japanese public schools, however, most English teachers are not native English speakers, and the focus is on grammar and reading, with very little practice in actually speaking the language.
After high school, when she was working but not yet in university, Haruka went to a private English school for lessons. Yet when she first moved to Canada, she still didn’t speak English very well. This was because in Japan, she didn’t have many opportunities to practice.
Haruka told me that the hardest things about learning English were pronunciation and slang. Proper pronunciation is hard to achieve without practice, especially when your native tongue is so much different than the target language. And slang, course, is usually not a big part of the curriculum in public schools. But in every day life, it can be a big part of communication.
Haruka said that meeting native speakers and having the chance to practice the language were the most helpful things in learning English. She also pointed out that TV and books were helpful tools. When I asked her what people in particular were most helpful to her, she said her university ESL teachers here in Canada were, because they knew how to communicate with non-native English speakers. They were very patient with her and were willing to slow down and speak clearly when talking to her, in order to help her understand what they were saying.
Haruka said that if there was any advice she could give to a person learning a second language, it would be to find lots of opportunities to practice with native speakers. She also said not to be shy – this was difficult for her at first. I can relate to that because I’m learning Japanese and am a little bit shy about speaking up when I have the opportunity to use it in the real world (which isn’t very often these days).
It would seem that immersing herself in an English-speaking culture was the best thing Haruka could have done for her English language skills. Immersion gives people the opportunity to talk to native speakers every day. And if a person is shy about speaking out in the target language, necessity might force them to do so like nothing else could. So it is probably the best thing any of us can do if we are learning another language.
Of course, not everyone has the opportunity to be immersed in a foreign culture. But what ESL teachers should learn from this is that students usually need practical experience as much as, or more than, being taught grammar, spelling or vocabulary. In a sense, if we plan our lessons well, we can give them an opportunity at a “mini-immersion” of sorts, even if it is just for an hour at a time.
