Starting A New English Club

To all of you who are interested in working on your English speaking skills, I'd like to invite you to attend and observe the Toastmasters meeting that will take place on Friday, November 28th at 7pm. It will be in the "iryo kei togo kyoiku center" on the second floor in the seminar room. Everyone is welcome. A Fukuoka Toastmasters club will be doing a demonstration meeting for us to show us how the club works. Toastmasters International is a non-profit organization that promotes good public speaking skills. You can visit their website at http://www.toastmasters.org/

Final RAT tomorrow

Hi guys! Tomorrow is the last RAT. Woohooo! I know you are very happy. I recommend that you concentrate on the respiratory system words in the diagram in your reading. Know what each part on the diagram is called in English. Good Luck!

Wrapping up this term's TBL

Here is the classroom where we will meet on 12/4. Don't make a mistake and go to our previous classroom!!

We're nearing the end of our TBL classes. Are you ready for the final next week (12/4)? We will be doing class evaluations after the test, so please come prepared to make constructive evaluations to help me to improve the class for future generations. There was a little confusion about the class title because the original listing in your schedules was for an omnibus class split into two groups. Since the class was taught all together (all 115 of you) by me, the former listing in your schedules isn't correct. We will be finishing up the 科学英語演習 (Scientific English Seminar) on 12/4. The course will continue from 12/11 as 国際医学 (International Medicine) for the medical students and 科学英語I (Scientific English I) for the biomedical science students. However, even though the title is different for the two majors, we will all still be studying together. Sorry for the confusion! But if you're confused, just imagine that multiplied by 100 and you will understand the level of MY confusion. Haha!

No matter what they call our classes, I still love you all and am proud to have you as my students!

close-up

Yum!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Here is the turkey that I prepared for my family's thanksgiving celebration. Yum! It doesn't look so big, but it is. The four of us ate until we were too full and there have still been several days worth of leftovers. We also had stuffing (can you see it in the turkey?), mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie, and Camembert cheese fondue with vegetables for dipping as the hors d'oeuvre. It took 4 hours for the turkey to be done. You can check out the burn on my hand that I got taking the turkey out of the oven next time in class--OUCH!

Making up for lost time . . .

I've spent a lot of weekends this month and last away at conferences and workshops, so I get to take a few days off in exchange for those days. I miss my family when I don't get to spend weekends with them, so I plan to make up for it by cooking a big Thanksgiving dinner this weekend. Turkey--YUM!

Wonderful advice from Mother Theresa

The Final Analysis

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone may destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is all between you and God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

-Mother Theresa of Calcutta

Mini's birthday

Remember me saying that two weeks ago on the day of our class (10/30) was my dog's birthday? Well, this is her. Isn't she cute? Her name is Mini and she just turned 5 (human) years old. She's getting a little bit grey around her muzzle, but she's still very energetic! She can jump waist high.

This reminds me--I need to buy some dogfood on the way home tonight. Gotta go--Mini's hungry!

Is that Santa Claus?

No, not Santa--yet. My Dad is a hunter. What do you think of that? I grew up in a home where hunting was a regular part of life. Dad would go out and kill the woolly mammoth and Mom would cook it up! Pretty different from your lives, I suppose. Have you ever tried elk meat? It's very tasty. Yum!

See you in two weeks!

Another day of class finished. I know I'm getting old because I always feel exhausted after our classes. But don't take that wrong. I love you all ! Next week will be off because of the university culture festival. It should give us all time to take a bit of a rest and get ready for our last RATs on 11/27. We can also look forward to our special guest speaker from the Sudan during 4th period that day. Woohoo! I can't wait to hear our guest speaker and hear all the questions that you think of to ask him. See you in two weeks!

Latest challenge: to make a RAT without any mistakes in it! I did it again today, didn't I? But you caught me!! Good job!

I roughed it through some difficult weather conditions to take a course at Edinburgh University in August. The course was "Teaching English for Medicine"--and you are reaping the benefits of my newfound knowledge now!

Tight Squeeze

Here we are crammed in our classroom on day one. Yikes! That's a lot of people--and there were more on the lower level who couldn't even see the screen! Oh no!

English Effort Points

What do you all think of the English Effort Points? I was trying to come up with a way to get you discussing our application exercises in English. I know you are all quite capable of discussing in English!! I have faith in you, so have a little faith in yourselves! I am not looking for perfect English, I am looking for good communication. Native speakers do it all the time without worrying about how many grammatical errors they make--and I will assure you that native speakers make grammatical mistakes too (just ask every American president from the beginning of time!)

Giving your team members a few points for the effort they made to use English was my idea. But at 10 points to disperse among the other team members, most of you were just blindly giving everyone 2 points each. So, last week I asked you to disperse 11 points. It seemed to help you start thinking a little more seriously about who made more effort. Remember, effort does not necessarily mean the person who speaks the best English-- even the worst speaker can be rewarded the most points. In fact, I hope that those who are less proficient will put in more effort and earn a lot of points!

I'm off to the copy machine to print out tomorrow's English Effort Point forms.

See you tomorrow!

Latest challenge: to produce handouts without any typographical errors in them! (you guys are just too sharp! You keep catching all of my mistakes!)

Team Based Learning

With the large number of students in our class, I needed to find a way to teach them that would provide more of a small class atmosphere and allow us to do more of the things possible in a small class. Research has found that the ideal number of students for learning a foreign language is a very low 5-9 students (Horne,1970).

So when I found Team Based Learning (TBL), it sounded like the only practical solution to my dilemma. Here it is November and we have been going strong with TBL for the last two months. How do you like it, guys?

I'm sorry about the uncomfortable classroom. The room itself is beautiful, but it wasn't built to accomodate 19 teams of 6-7 students and all of their stuff (you guys have a LOT of STUFF! haha!). There is barely room for me to squeeze between the tables. Yikes!

It's also a bummer that I have to send 48 of you out to another room down the hall for our iRAT (individual readiness assessment test), since it's just too cramped to have you all take it in the same room. I've been looking for another venue for our class, but the truth is that there isn't one available. Even next year's class can't be scheduled into one of the better classrooms since the rooms are reserved up to two years in advance.

I'm keeping the cogs moving in my brain to try to improve our situation. I'm open to any ideas you may have, so send them in!

I love my students!

There have been many ups and downs in the last few months as our new medical/scientific English curriculum has begun here at Kyudai. The ups of course include that I love my students and am constantly amazed by their intelligence, curiosity, and enthusiasm.

The downs include that I am learning how hard life is for medical students. They are often exhausted from all of the studying that is necessary to keep up with their classes and I'm sure they must sometimes feel burnt out. I'm trying very hard not to take it personally when students doze off in class. In fact, I have put a lot of effort into trying to keep the class moving forward in a way that will keep them alert--which can be very difficult in a class of 115 students!

My latest challenge: To keep even the sleepiest of sleepyheads awake and on topic during class.