My bicycle is resembling despair day by day.
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Showing posts with label next to nothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label next to nothing. Show all posts
2008-09-30
Recent Reading
is A Handbook for Teaching English at Japanese Colleges and Universities. The book is a compilation work done by a man named Paul Wadden; is various journals written on experiences of Teaching English at Japanese Colleges through which experiences teachers from the U.S., England, Australia etc discuss informative strategies they attained through classrooms. There are several specific difficulties in relation to English classes in Japan. Some are because of educational system itself, such as "less communication with students" thanks to one class per week curricula. Others, peculiar to Japanese psyche, that is; wall of silence and nationwide low standard in regard to writing, speaking, and listening in English.
You might say that the trouble peculiar to Japanese people (including me) in the international context may have deeper roots; cultural difference. I don't disagree. But we cannot improve our culture in the same way as a second language.
The English education in Japan begins with junior high school (twelve years olds') English text book. For me, the very first encounter with English was this useful expression:
This is a pen.
Somehow, I can still remember it clearly.
(Indeed, there will be no situation where you have to say "this is a pen" except presenting it to a blind person, or in some situation comedy). I feel like it was a real encounter. We the teacher and students chorus through
This is a pen.
This is a dog.
This is a lion.
A week.
(Probably that was at least in part because of the fact that there were just two or three classrooms per week).
And the next week thank God turns out to be like:
Are these bells?
Yes, these are bells.
So, after all, some problems are unique to Japan in teaching English. The writers, who's occupation are foreign teacher in colleges, introduce practical methods and teaching styles acquired through their own teaching. For one, a college professor introduces the A+ strategy. That the conversation with Japanese students (and citizens alike) at times falls into police interrogation-like "facts" questioning; asking facts; answering facts; asking facts; answering facts; and the talk does not go anywhere. Like yamanote-line. And they sometimes ask things like whether I like "nattou" (a traditional Japanese food) from out of nowhere, a writer says. It would be helpful for both them and us if there is some rule, that is; Answer Plus something. Some personal opinion regarding the reply or some-thing: "I'm from California where my father and grandfather lived in." A: "How nice, I'd like to go see Safeco field!" etc--not like "do you like lions?" anyway.
When Japanese students enter into colleges they have a level of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. The problem is they (or I might say we) have little or no practice using English to communicate with others. Evey texts are first and for the last time translated into Japanese, and this enables English classrooms to fall into some sort of English laboratory; they are studying, not using. To break though this confidence or conference in their own cult, English language instructors are required to make use of best advisable devices which, hopefully offers a chance for students to become familiar with raw materials. This book discusses what kind of reading and listening materials are suited to Japanese students as well as its workable strategies in the field. And aside from reading and listening, English teachers have to deal with prevalent theme: the lack of spontaneity among Japanese students. The basic line recommended for new candidates, though, is not to go against students and admins and Japanese culture. To cultivate the class, and to found a hybrid (--Japanese and somewhere you belong) environment is made something of concern in a chapter of this compilation work. Culture, I think, is something like Maxims of Speech. You cannot change them. Again, a level of quietude maybe seems unique to a Westerner, and needs to be understood. It has a root in the Confucius based enculturation that calls for humility and harmony. Braking the Maxims I'm sorry but it's ten to four in the morning, at around halfway to the appendix an associate professor at Kyoto University discusses; it might be beneficial to let them write a short paragraph as a response, as a means to express an honest feeling on the spot.
And "that" was not disagreeable to me.
2008-09-28
Dybek Links
three in the morning after finishing homework
kicking back with a cup of coffee in my hand
coming around here to seek out a means to reorganize
my thoughts
I found whether it's suitable for the situation that the subject should be I or some other...
Here're voices of Stuart Dybek. One of the best guy in the world extant. I just want to post these links for myself, so I can go and listen at any time:
http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/writers/spring03/041803.htm A lecture
http://www.lions-online.org/podcasts/dybek.html "We didn't"
http://www.lannan.org/lf/rc/event/stuart-dybek/
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=tR6ii2CGYZA"Pet Milk"
Written form interviews:
http://www.wooster.edu/ArtfulDodge/interviews/dybekhirsch.htm
http://chicagoist.com/2005/09/14/interview_stuart_dybek_author.php
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398309
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/stuart_dybek.php
http://webdelsol.com/Other_Voices/DybekInt.htm
Human laziness is that if I download these to the harddrive, I'd forget about them.
night
2008-09-27
2008-09-21
"Race is a central test of our belief that we're our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper...There's a sense that if we are to get beyond our racial divides, that it should be neat and pretty, whereas part of my argument was that it's going to be hard and messy--and that's where faith comes in"
---Barack Obama Newsweek Jul. 21
I got used to be alone
from the day when I entered in the elementary school, my mother was working outside
I used to go back home with a key
my elder brother and sister were usually not in the home
hanging around somewhere...with their friends or still in the class
my mom used to come back home at around six thirty.
I used to spend my time in the traditional Japanese closet
where the mattress (futon) was stowed
staring wave line of the wood panel
an hour, two hours, or three hours sometimes
(which means I least like the recent version of Dorae-mon
it seems to me a kind of byproduct of Educational Affairs Group
I don't like educational system as a whole...
who on earth likes it then...??) (Anyway)
my father came back or used to visit home only on Saturdays to spend one night
the table would become oppressively silent when he was home
nobody spoke during supper, even words like "pleas pass that on to me"sounded as if a significant statement has just made. that was
every Saturday
I understand what was going on around me
my father was living in another place with another woman
I knew that even at that time that he's not living with our family
what else
My father is probably a kind of psychiatrist who's half dis-ease himself
...on his recuperation hopefully...
rumor has it he has a son, twenty years old or so
the source is my brother...
it is not unfeasible my cousin is now in the same university...though I don't care about
My identified cousin found a way to a psychiatric ward from out of the blue
that was last month
me...?
don't wanna know about the detail.
I'm not in a bad shape with my father today
we meet twice a year or so and talk something with each other
I like him.
but just that.
I didn't make a single friend during elementary school years
while I was in the third grade in the school I began making friends at last
but meantime my parents got divorced in the end
of four years of hopeless battle (maybe my mom had to talk something with him about Money
but it was long) (strangely, though, I think I am the one who appreciate their sanguinary waste in some way)
and we moved on to another district
the outlook seems bleak
but like flowers or vegetables or weeds or something like that we can manage ourselves
because we are preprogrammed to do so.
If I failed, these cold facts
would stand before me again
I worked a little bit
fifteen pieces of part-times (circa)
the longest, a year and half
shortest, you can imagine
mostly I read books
two sets of World Literature
whole through, from the Homer to Somebody I cannot remember
and Kant and Showpenhoawar (cannot spell)
and what the hell, Holy Bible for just for the sake of argument.
in Japanese
So...what you've learned?
"honor is for women and virtue is for men."
"and if you want to be stupid, you just need to address a woman about virtue."
's Kant.
"she cannot select herself...but she just can be selected."
what else. that's wholesale true.
Therefore, he had to say;
"Men who deserve to be hanged considerably outnumber women who deserve to be exiled to an island."
in seventeen seventy something.
All things considered, though, what I've learned is what I had had already known
I just found out things I already knew.
So, what for? Why do you read?
Can those Read books be like savings for bank account?
"and darkness was upon the face of the deep"
I like Melville ("Piear"..."Pierl", or..."Pierr"is his best work.)
and Dickinson (at least I can spell).
and Thomas Mann was my Mann of course
Some might have to be kind enough to tell me that my liking is non of anyone's bloody business
uh...what else...
I loved a woman
150 cm (I am not used to foot and inch) tall.
round faced (round faced Mignon. I miss her from time to time)
and what's more... she loved me...
what else
I don't know what happened to her for
we lived in an apartment for
maybe five years
ended
this is me.
Consequently,
I'm off to save my life
==
2008-08-30
In Memoriam
He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity.
--George Orwell, speaking of Dickens
"Try write some on the Poetess, Emily Dickinson", I think I promised it with you Dana.
I just want to specify how I encountered her works. Though sometimes in some ways I know I exaggerate things, I'll try my best.
Well to cut the chase, I was reading a book and the book contained a epigraph by Dickinson:
The Brain--is wider than the Sky--
For--put them side by side--
The one the other will contain
With ease--and You--beside--
The Brain is deeper than the sea--
For--hold them--Blue to Blue--
The one the other will absorb--
As Sponges--Buckets--do--
The Brain is just the weight of God--
For --Heft them--Pond for Pond--
And they will differ--if they do--
As Syllable from Sound--
It was my religious or sacrilegious years that I, with her verses in my back pack, went to a local library everyday, took a chair at one quiet corner, dictionary beside and till the evening comes I stayed with her.
There, I was angry; among elders reading travel brochures; among children with their head absorbed in the comic books; and young students saddled with sacrificial endless studies which in any event would take them to the course unwillingly or willingly identical with their parents'. That the realization someone is living one's life for oneself for ever, and elsewhere on the earth while some other is and was living for all the time was fatal.
I could have shorten their life, if there wasn't law.
They were and are good person, just next to you
for all the time, and that sometimes makes me mammy mad.
But I'll delete these lines, I haven't been meaning to say this kinda age-old jabberwocky.
That the epigraph was, along with the book, one of the most beautiful I've ever seen has had made me cost $147, and which was and is the most expensive buy on my shelves. I needed it; Thomas H. Johnson Harvard Press version, probably to make myself more convinced (on something I don't know) or more decisive. Dunno. No artist ever lived without words in the end, and without books. That's that. I'm just an ordinal reader, willing to change the world but can't, thinking that he's one of those who believes in words but...not so sure.
I'm sorry Dana, I'm not responding to our promise.
Next round sitting, would come by, I hope I can do.
2008-06-24
It's Not Coming Around Too Soon
"If you read between the line you know that I am just trying to understand"
--Johnny Cash IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND.
Hope this post is not mine, but just a late depository of our decorum.
Soliloquies against nothing. The thing is, there were pen and paper at hand.
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