Words to Live By
Taken from Japan Times (September 10, 2009)
by Judit Kawaguchi
Many of you who read the Japan Times regularly may have seen Ms. Judit Kawaguchi’s monthly article entitled ’Words to Live by’. I always looked forward to her article where she interviews various people from high level business managers and entertainers to the common person. Judit takes out some of their words of wisdom and humorous sayings and puts them in her article. You can see all of her past articles by doing a search on the Japan Times web site but here is a small excerpt from one of her interviews with a tour guide that I thought you would enjoy!
Tour guide
Shinobu Nimura
Shinobu Nimura, 50, is an experienced tour guide who organizes long-distance bus journeys through Asia, Africa and South America. His tours take one to two months and cover vast territories. In 25 years, he has clocked up an incredible 280,000 km on buses, the equivalent to riding around the Equator seven times. Nimura has seen it all, and there's never been a view he didn't love.
Travel is not supposed to be smooth sailing; it's more like roughing it on stormy seas. The word "travel" is derived from the Latin verb "tripaliare," which means "to torture." This is very fitting, since in the past, travel was dangerous, painful and often deadly. As long as I keep this in mind, no matter where I am or what happens, I'm always sitting pretty.
If you stick to the "safe" option, you'll never have a great meal. Local food is either very delicious or quite terrible. Whichever, it always has a flavor that will stick in your mind
Although I often don't know where I'm going, I enjoy being on the move. I have total confidence that any journey will be exciting and fun and I like to take people along with me so they can see it for themselves. My clients are all hardcore travelers, and the same 100 or so of them keep going around the world with me.
Great memories often come from rough experiences. Once back in Japan, I organize parties where my clients can exchange photos and reminisce. Without exception, the best stories revolve around things that, at the time, were not so enjoyable. Often, people remember these incidents with such fondness that they eventually become the highlights of the whole trip. Nobody, on the other hand, talks about the luxury hotels that we occasionally stayed in.
A Blast from the past!
This next article was taken from the April 2002 edition of the FIA Monthly. Although it is old it has some great comments and ideas regarding Rhythm Training and recording lessons to push and challenge our members..
A very prolific blues player Ken Moores, used a very apt metaphor to describe the difficulties he had in raising a particular student’s low motivation to study. According to Ken, the student possessed quite decent communicative abilities and fluency but never really seemed to try to polish her English to nearly the level of potential he felt she had. This was, unfortunately, accompanied by a certain air of arrogance and she insisted that she didn’t need any more work on her English skill, as it was already good enough.
Although he had tried coaching on a number of occasions Ken, in typical Kenesque fashion, finally took off the kid gloves and got through this hubris by telling her that she reminded him of a certain guitarist he knew who sounded good enough at parties but couldn’t get a decent gig anywhere (no, the guitarist wasn’t Jim Molloy). The reason for the guitarist failings was, Ken maintained, that he was “just too sloppy”. He knew how to play but he didn’t play well enough for anyone to actually stop and listen to him. I liked his example and it stuck with me ever since. I have had more than a few students over the years that were like that very guitarist or perhaps, in lacking the arrogance, and perhaps a whole lot of confidence, could be the Charlie Browns of the ESL learners.
One of the methods I’ve used to bring a few students down to earth without telling them that their English wasn’t actually good enough to communicate effectively with native speakers and/or to develop self-confidence in their ability to take control of their shortcomings and improve on their own, is to develop self-awareness and self-monitoring of their own English skills. One method in this area that has had particular success for me is the recording of students’ rhythm training exercises.
Several students over the years have told me that they felt they didn’t need or like rhythm training and that they would rather work on their conversation skills. I am a supporter of rhythm training and of course felt otherwise. So, to add another dimension to make rhythm training more personally relevant and to add, as I mentioned above, an element of meta-cognitive learning to the lessons, I had students record their own voice as they went through rhythm training practice lessons. Students were asked to work on a lesson for 20 to 30 minutes for 4-5 nights a week and then use a tape recorder or MD recorder for one session to record their own voice as they repeated their lessons. The next day, they were to bring the tape or MD to class for us to analyze together. More times than not, as we compared the tapes with the FIA rhythm training tapes/CD’s, the students professed that their pronunciation and intonation was much different than that of the native speakers.
Most students agreed to continue with the training and, with a few, were able to maintain this concentration of study for more than a month. After a month, the dedicated students were able to make noticeable improvements in their pronunciation, intonation and, in the in-class work, their response time. Several students seemed to have more confidence in their English while others noted that they were happy to make such improvements in a short amount of time. Just having the students aware of their weaknesses on their own and having them take responsibility for their improvements was satisfaction enough for me.
At last JALT conference, I attended a very good presentation from two university instructors who had much the same to say about their use of video recording of students. They had students record their conversations with other students and make notes of their perceived weaknesses. As they recorded more of their in-class work and developed their pronunciation, intonation and other lexicon-based features of conversation such illocutions and hedging, they were able to see noticeable progress over time. The instructors provided the attendees of the lecture with samples of students conversations in pairs and highlighted the before and after results. It was a convincing presentation and I would enjoy hearing from any trainers who have tried similar lessons in the past.
Other lexicon-based features of conversation such illocutions and hedging, they were able to see noticeable progress over time. The instructors provided the attendees of the lecture with samples of students conversations in pairs and highlighted the before and after results. It was a convincing presentation!
By Rob McLaughlin
Congrats to our Rebus Puzzle Winners!
We got a lot of entries into our Rebus Puzzle Contest but only the best of the best made it into the top 3.
1st Place— Joe, Shizuoka City — Joe wins his choice of trip to Hawaii* or something smaller.
2nd Place—Matt, Hamamatsu — Matt wins his choice of a 60” Sony plasma TV* or something smaller.
3rd Place— Lonnie, Shimada - Lonnie wins his choice of a new Ipad* or something smaller.
*Large prizes are not available to FIA employees or affiliate companies.
YOUR PRIZES ARE ON THE WAY!
Editors Note: The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of FIA or the P&P committee. That being said, we here at the P&P committee will have to check incoming mail much more closely from now on.
