Congratulations!

Congratulations to all the junior high school students of Makubetsu, Satsunai and Churui who graduated! You will now start a new period in your life. Make the best of it!

I had the privilege of being able to view Satsunai Higashi JHS's graduation ceremony. Many of the seniors and their juniors too were in tears as they gave their speeches of gratitude and talked about the three years spent at junior high. I have known all of them through class for the past three years and some of them I have known for longer. I didn't cry but I can tell you that I was filled with pride and sadness as they walked by in their processions in and out of the gym. I'm sad to part with them but happy to see them growing up and moving on.

From last week and continuing on into this week, graduated jhs students have been coming and going from the teacher's room to announce their acceptance into a private or public high school. They came to say thank you to all the teachers who taught them over the past three years and especially to their home room teachers and others who helped coach them for interviews and entrance examinations. Many of them were in tears of joy.

So once again, I say congratulations and good luck in your new endeavors.

Noelle Climbs

IMG_7843
Originally uploaded by mr_caffeine74.

Noelle climbs tables, chairs, trees, stairs, people and cat jungle gyms!

Here Tetsuya is trying to convince her to come down off the gym. You can see she can touch the ceiling from there! She loves climbing that thing and I usually stop her. It's hard to imagine a two year old climbing like she does. No fear. I wonder what she'll be like in 10 years or 20?

IMG_7843

Second Language Learning

I have started reading some articles about Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning by Greg Thomson. I have found them on a site called Language Impact's Language Learning Website. I have just finished reading Thomson's What? Me Worry About Language Learning? article. In it he talked about his experience and trails trying to learn new languages. In particular he talked about his experience and how he went about trying to learn Blackfoot. He also talks about why some people may be better at learning languages than others and why some languages may be more difficult for one person than another. It was very interesting for me and enlightening. The main gist of the article, other than being a primer for one who is thinking about starting to learn a new language, is that you have to have a good strategy. He says that a good strategy would include

• a time commitment,
  
• making yourself accountable,
  
• ways to keep improving your conversational ability, and
  
• a way to develop lots of relationships with speakers of the language you want to learn.

The first two should not be too difficult for most people to accomplish. The second and third strategies seem a bit more difficult. What if there are no or very few native speakers of the language you want to learn?

Well, anyways, I hope that this new insight into language learning will help me develop better activities and methods for teaching English. Although one of the things that he repeatedly stresses is that it is extremely difficult to learn a second language in a language class. 頑張るぞォ

It's a boy!

It's a boy!
Originally uploaded by mr_caffeine74.

Introducing Aspen Ross Lane. Born 12:54 in the afternoon. Weight 3594gm.
Ryo felt labor coming on at 6:30am and he was born that day at 12:54, just after noon. There were no complications. A few seconds after he came out he started to cry. I cut the umbilical cord. He started looking for a drink right away. Both mom and baby are doing great. They will be in the hospital until Friday.

Testing hurdle for international students

The link is no longer valid but I first read about this at http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/09/23/english.test.ap/index.html. I have a print out of it.

The article is about the TOEFL - the Test of English as a Foreign Language. It is a test that international students hoping to study in the United States can take to prove their language skills so that they can be admitted to a university.

The test has been changed to include a speaking component. Students will be asked to listen to some English and then read a passage and then speak about both. The organization the administers this test, the Educational Testing Services, hopes that the test will encourage a change in English education around the world. And I hope it does!

I have been looking for a good book to use in a short run English class for students going abroad. In my searcehs I have seen many books with titles like "Why Japanese can't speak English"and "What's wrong with English Education in Japan". There are many, many books like this that have been published. Many of them are quite old. Many more are published ever year. If everyone knows that there is something wrong, why is nothing changing? This is one of my biggest questions. It is a lament that I hear native English speakers teaching English in Japan and Japanese teaching English in Japan express all the time.

This reminded me of the article about the TOEFL.

So what IS wrong with English education? I don't know, but I think spending more effort on creating your own English is a start in the right direction. What I mean is, it is important not just to read and listen and memorize, but to try your hand at creating your own sentences. All the time. Just do it! Do it in your head. Do it on paper. Do it in class. You must practice making your own English sentences. You must practice making English your own.

And that is all I have to say about that.

bakudan

bakudan
Originally uploaded by mr_caffeine74.

This post marks the spot where a bomb from a "grandmother" bomber was dropped in Makubetsu Japan. I don't know what a "grandmother" bomber is. This spot is right next to the Makubetsu library. The US bombers were aiming for a factory nearby, the Nitta factory. This landmark is not very visible with trees standing in front of the post. I doubt many people see it and considering the fact that this hole was made over 60 years ago, I doubt many people remember it.

突然にOut of the blueからかかってきたのよ

今日久しぶりに同僚にあったら、突然out of the blueと言われた。何を言っているかさっぱり分からなかった。

out of the blueなんなのよ?!　
えぇ!？out of the blueって久しぶりじゃないの?
違う、「突然」という意味だよ。
えぇ、そう?!

テレビ番組でネイティブの人がout of the blueは久しぶりという意味で教えていたらしい。早速googleで検索して見ました。やっぱりたくさんのbloggerがこのことを納得したかのように投稿しています。自分の最新日米口語辞典で調べてみました。

out of the blue 藪から棒に　　英語は「いきないり」｢突然に｣の意味で使われる。このまえに(like)a bolt out of the blue　というかたちになると、「晴天の霹靂」になる。平易ないいかたをすれば、altogether unexpectedly でも間に合う。※喫茶店で彼と話していたら,彼は藪から棒に5万貸してくれと言った。 We were talking together in a coffee shop when out of the blue he asked me to lend him fifty thousand yen.

またあのRoger PulversのGetUpEnglishのサイトででも紹介されましたよ。

「久しぶりに」として使えるかもしれないけれども、基本は「突然に」｢予期せぬ」ことを指していますよ。