Busier than .....

Oh my god.  I have been so busy.  I have been busier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!  Can you imagine that?  One thing that I haven't done recently is update this blog. I want to.  But I just don't have the time.  There is always something more important that I have to get done first.

Recently at the junior high schools, the 8th graders are studying the comparative and superlative forms. That always reminds me of all the interesting English sayings that make use of these forms. Like the one I introduced at the beginning of this post.

I am busier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

To understand this, first you have to know what "busy" means.  This is an easy word.  It means that you have a lot of things to do.  It means that you can't sit still because you have to keep moving.  I am very busy because I have many lesson plans to make and other work to do.  My daughter is very busy because she can't sit still.  Next you need to understand what "a long tailed cat" is.  This should be easy, especially if you use a dictionary to look up any words you don't know.  Surely you can understand what a cat with a long tail is.  That is what "long tailed cat" means.  尻尾の長い猫.  You can say "a cat with a long tail" but you can also modify "cat" with "long tailed".  There is a rocking chair in the picture above.  Now imagine a room that has many rocking chairs.  Now imagine that all those rocking chairs are moving, rocking back and forth.  Do you have that image in your mind?  Now put a cat in there with a long tail and you'll understand how busy it would be.

Other phrases that make use of the comparative (比較級)

• colder than ice
• cooler than a cucumber
• faster than a bullet
• higher than a kite
• lighter than a feather
• slower than molasses
• hotter than hell

Well, does this give you any ideas?  Do you think you could come up with some of your own comparisons to make an interesting phrase or two?

Have fun!

Getting Ready to Go

We have only two more classes left before we head for Australia!  I had meant to post updates all along about this but I just didn't have the time.  I guess it is better late than never.

Here is some interesting English phrases in both American English and Australian English with their Japanese equivalents.

I am copy pasting these directly from MS Word so forgive me if the formatting gets strange.

Australian English words and expressions.

She'll be right!: Everything will be fine!	大丈夫、よくなるよ
Take away food: Take-out food	持ち帰り
Tea: evening meal	夕食、食事
Telly: The television.	テレビ
This arvo: This afternoon.	今日の午後
Too right!: Absolutely	もちろん！そうだよ！
Strewth!: It's the truth!	本当だよ
Spunky: Good-looking, attractive as in "what a spunk"	カワイイ、かっこいい
Sport	くだけた「お前、あなた」
See you in the soup: See you around.	またね
Q: Thank you (mumbled).	ども（ありがとう）
Num-nums: Tasty food.	美味しい食べ物
Mate: This usually means a friend but it can be used to talk about or to anyone - even a total stranger.	友達に対して使う「お前、あなた」
Matey with: Familiar or friendly with.	（誰かと）親しい
Beaut	よい。よかった。最高。素晴らしい。
Bush	いなか
Dead to the world	ぐっすりと寝ている
Dekko	a look, ひと目 Go and have a dekko at it. 見に行ってごらん。
have a go at	try,　挑戦する、やってみる よくわからないけど、やってっみる Don’t know much about it, but I’ll have a go at it.

I want you, to want me!

This week the JHS 3rd graders are studying, or have studied, the following grammar.

My father tells me to work hard.

私の父が 私に　一所懸命動力して　と言います。

主語＋動詞　（tell, want, say, askなど）+目的語＋to不定詞

機能てきには人の言葉を伝えることです。「人に～してほしい」と言う

Recently I have been listening to music while I run. Usually I listen to podcasts where people are talking and not to music. I have been listening to a music podcast done by Adam Curry, a former MTV VJ. During one of the podcasts he played a song by the band Cheap Trick called "I want you to want me.". The grammar from this song is the same is the grammar the JHS 3rd graders are studying now. However, it is a little hard to translate the title "I want you to want me" directly into Japanese. The Japanese title is 「甘い罠」 wich would a direct translation back into English would render something like "Sweet Trap".


By the way, my children want me to play with them and not get angry. My wife wants me enjoy my life in Japan. My mother wants me to come home. She is always telling me to find a job in the USA. What do you want me to do? What do people want you to do? What do people tell you to do? What do they ask you to do?

Here is a link to Cheap Trick performing the song at the Budokan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQ9dm7zaQU

And here is a link to the band KSM performing a cover of the song. The girls in KSM are about 15 years old, by the way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vQ9q3qMLMQ&feature=related


Enjoy!

Make Mistakes!

I was reading a mailing list for bilingual families, the Bilingual Families mailing list today and there was an interesting post that caught my eye. Normally I don't have time to even open the messages but I opened this one. A 17 year old had just joined the list and was introducing himself. He is a bilingual Spanish-English speaker. He was talking about how now he rarely speaks Spanish because maybe, he doesn't have confidence in his abilities. He's afraid of making mistakes. In the very first response to his message, one list member said:

My husband, a native Spanish speaker, who didn't learn English until late in life, always encourages me to just speak - don't let mistakes stop you from connecting with people. He says, "The important thing is to be able to communicate. If people can understand you, then you've accomplished the goal."

It is such an obvious suggestion and one that is reiterated over and over again and one that can't be stressed enough. That is don't let mistakes stop you from connecting with people! Teachers almost always say the same thing to their students. Don't let fear of making mistakes prevent you from connecting with people. However, at the same time, we put fear of making mistakes into the students by testing them and giving them grades and by forcing them to perform in front of a group and then making a big deal of their mistakes by correcting them in front of everyone. That's like being publicly whipped for some students.

If you are interested, you can get more information about the Bilingual Families at the Bilingual Families Web Page.
URL: http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/biling-fam.html

Number 12 Video

Over the last two weeks at elementary school we have been learning how to talk about our schedules.  In doing so we had to first make sure that everyone could say 1-12 so that they could at least say the hour at which they do something.  Most 5th graders already know English numbers from 1-10 but just to make sure that everyone could say 1-10 and 11 and 12 I introduced the number 12 song from my youth.  I watched this on America's public television channel, PBS. It was an animated video of a song and I watched it many times while watching Sesame Street.  So, now for your viewing and listening pleasure, here is the number 12 song from Sesame Street on YouTube.

12 and Pinball Animation.

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

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.

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。

For Peaches

One of my students who I call "Peaches" was complaining that I haven't been updating my blogs so this one is for you Peaches.
Recently I have been thinking a lot about how Noelle is going to learn English. She is learning English from being with me. However, since I leave for work in the morning and come home at night, she doesn't get to be with me very much. She gets some other limited English input from TV, music and books but not much. I doubt that a child can really learn how to speak English from TV, songs and what not. The child really needs to interact, to communicate with another person. She was learning well I thought but now the balance is tipped to far over to the Japanese side. She interacts with her mother, her grandmother, her grandfather and everyone else here in the community using Japanese. So where before, she would accept both English and Japanese for things, now she insists on Japanese. She has learned from countless intractions with many people that Japanese works. So when she comes to me, she tries to correct me and won't accept me speaking English. But of course this is not a all or nothing phenomenon. She doesn't totally understand the difference between English and Japanese. So she still uses some English. Mostly for the names of things. She also says "Okay" and "Hello". She used to say "morning" but I haven't been able to get her to say it recently. I need some help. I'm so scared she's not going to be able to learn English well.
By the way, the picture in this post is of Noelle trying to pick up her grandmother's cat Saemon. She loves playing with the cat and chases it all over, pets it, throws things at it, gives it things, picks it up and carries it, runs away from it and even feeds it. The cat often reaches out a paw and scratches or hits her . She always has little scratches on her hands arms and face from Saemon but she still loves it.

Special English Podcasts on VOA

Recently I begain a search for podcasts or other similiar options that would be useful for learners of English or other foreign languages. Personally I am interested in continuting my study of German and Chinese. I have always been drawn to the use of techonology in the study of foreing languages. First of all I suppose I should explain what a podcast is, or at least my understanding of what podcasts are. The word "podcast" itself is a term coined from Apple's iPod. It combines the "pod" in "iPod" with the "cast" from "broadcast". "Cast" is a word that all by itself means "to throw". "Broad" means "wide". No, a podcast is not "throwing pods" but it is broadcasting non-music audio in an MP3 format that you can listen to on your iPod or other digital music player. Heck, if you wanted to, you could burn it to an audio CD and listen to it on a cd-player as well.

These days there are very few families in Japan who don't have a computer and an Internet connection. Students who don't have these things at home often have similiar resources available to them at school or someplace else. Many people also have MD players or MP3 players. There are many ways to listen to a podcast. You can copy the file to your iPod or other MP3 player, burn them to an audio CD or copy them to an MD and listen to them in a car or while walking or exercising.

By the way, if you do copy them to your MD player, I suggest you not do it with a SONY Net-MD. It is best not to use the Net-MD software and to copy them to the MD using a stereo line. The reason why is that SONY Net-MD software will mark each track you copy to the MD as non-editable. You can't delete it, divide it or combine it. Being able to divide tracks on an MD or add track marks is a valuable function for learners of language. For example you can add a track mark (divide a track) right at the beginning of a phrase or word that you want to be able to practice. Then you can use the back function on your MD to listen to that word or phrase over and over again without having to search for it. You could even have the MD player repeat that phrase over and over again.

Sorry for the long digression. What I really wanted to do with this article is to introduce a great resource for English listening practice. What I found yesterday was the Voice of Americas Special English podcasts. These podcasts are for learners of English and are in slow and clear American English. Go to http://www.voanews.com/ and look for the Learning English or Special English link. There you can listen to the Special English Internet radio broadcasts or download the podcasts to listen to later. I'm really excited about this and I hope many of you can take advantage of this valuable resource. VOA says on their site that they are offering the podcasts as a trial. Let's hope that they make it a permanent feature!

I am thinking about

I am thinking about what to do for my night class coming up next month.  I have a very limited amount of time to prepare my students for their trip abroad.  They need more vocabulary so I think teaching lots of vocabulary and making that vocabulary stick is very important.  They need lots of practice speaking.  They especially need a lot of practice with conversation but how to go about doing it?  If they have a set dialogue then they don’t have to improvise and improvisation is a vital part of conversational skill.  A circumlocution game or a game like Scategories may be the key.  With an increased vocabulary they should at least be able to one-word-shotgun their way through a conversation.

Learning English Requires Action

"Learning English requires action. You may know all the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve nothing. The fact is, if you want to learn to speak English well, you must change your life. Here are some examples of things you will have to do:

* read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary
* listen to an audiobook or other recording in English, stopping it frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to imitate the speaker's pronunciation
* spend your afternoon practicing the pronunciation of the English "r" sound
* carefully write an e-mail message in English, using a dictionary or a Web search every 20 seconds to make sure every word is correct, and taking 5 minutes to write one sentence
* think about an English sentence you've read, wondering if it could say "a" instead of "the" in the sentence, and trying to find similar sentences on the Web to find out the answer
* walk down the street and build simple English sentences in your head (talking to yourself in English about the things you see around you)

What kind of person would do all these crazy things? Only one kind. The kind of person who enjoys doing them. If you want to learn to speak English well, you're going to have to become that person. You cannot hate doing these things. Have you ever heard of a person who became successful by doing something he hated? "
From Antimoon.com