Credibility

Today was the last lecture of Business English. Two DCS and two LIP. They were great, actually.

Last individual presenter was a girl who was good at previous presentations. Actually, her presentation was not as good as my expectation. But everyone listened carefully, and that made an active discussion after that. I thought that credibility is important for all situations.

After the lecture, I asked teacher about how to study English in Japan. He told me three things. Read English books, watch DVD spoken in and written in English, and join some conversation in English. Actually, these are great way to study.

I will keep studying English, and in the next study abroad, I will become like English-Japanese.

a negative aspects of positive evaluations

Today’s lecture was also Longer Individual Presentation.　There were four presentation about presentation skills, mafia, JPmorgan, and DLA Norgic. Interestingly, every presentation has same outline, introduction, agenda, contents(What, Why, How), conclusion. I think it is caused by the fact here is an economic focus school.

Familiar comments were amount of information. Someone said that information on slide was too much to understand. I was commented same thing. I thought, especially in not native language presentation, not linguistic communication is important.

Actually, I felt boring in some presentation because they did not put their effort on presentation. But no one pointed that because we had to say only positive comments. I think this―cannot discover core of problem―was the biggest shortcoming of positive evaluation.

Longer Individual Presentation

Today’s Business English was only Longer Individual Presentation, and this was my turn!

About my presentation, I got following comments:

bad
1. look script so much
2. too much information in one slide(characters are small)
3. topic is little more complex

good
1. good voice
2. good slide and color
3. hand action

Most impressive thing for me was everyone gave me comment after presentation, not question. I want to say thank you for everyone in class.


About other people’s presentation, what I felt was familiarity is important because it causes discussion with individual opinion. One of today’s topic was consuming attitudes and it caused interesting discussions.

Any way I have derived from big task, so I am happy now.

Nozick feedback

Today’s English class was Nozick feedback and longer individual presentation. In lecture I did not know the word “punctuation”=reading mark, but now I got it.

Nosick feedback:
1. long sentence can be divided by punctuation, or put the mark of illustration before the long part.
2. capitalism opposition> opposition to capitalism
3. If we… sometimes lacks subject. If we > let us
4. difference between OO, which/who XX, and OO which/who XX is that, former means all OO are XX, but latter limits OO only which/who is XX.
5. reason for one’s –ing or why S+V, strive(=to make a great effort to achieve)> aim
6. after ;, we can use capital if the sentence follows is long.
7. however should not be used in sentences, but can used with , , or first and last

Longer Individual presentation:
1. why/what/how are important
2. figure is standard of business communication
3. good chance is not necessary to say


present= give a gift (not represent)


About feedback of my assignment, I found there are many absences of “the”. And even Soviet Union, an unique object, needs “the”.

And there are some spelling mistake and chose of word such as present( not represent).

I will try to care about them.

stable and reliable

Today’s lecture was all individual presentation. I tried to look carefully for preparation of my presentation. Here are some points:

Tone: should corresponds with characters, and atmosphere. But energetic does not always mean good.
Theme: should have some connection for listener.
New info: should be included in presentation.
Standing: stably is important.
Question: should be presented first.
Picture: is better to have some caption
Character: too small is hard to see

I noticed that listeners were always feeling boring. That was big problem…

After the lecture, I asked some question about last assignment. Here are answers for the questions.

Improvement vs improving: -ing is used to express activity.
Equal to vs equal as: to is directly same, as is indirectly such as property of someone.
Stable vs reliable: stable is about quantity, and reliable is about quality.

I will make my presentation now!

gramatical problem

Today's class consisted of DCS and excercises of gramatical mistake in English writing.
followings are some points:

DCS:
*Voice is important(do not read, but tell)
*hand is also important
*familiarity(closeness to topic for listener)
*small paper is good
*last is "thank you for listening"

Excercise:
divide sentences(use some connecting, and find each subject)
*, and or .(full stop)
*Having +++ed,
*since is because + time

make formal:
*other guys>competitors
*are dying>be looking forward to
*great>rewarding
*flop>not beeing successful
*crazy about>very enthusiastic about

find less word:
a check in the amount of $10> a check for $10
along the lines of> like
in reference to > about
in regard to > about
viable to the eye > visible
will you be so kind as to > please

translation feedback

done>>>fullfill
allow>>>to ++
equal as (not to)
future>>> in the future
nation>>>if it means soil, we should use land
mixture>>>combination
characteristic>>s
increment>>>enhancement

Rural area>>country side
promote>>>support
maintenance is uncountable

Information does not mean informative, and evaluation is made by audience not by presenter.

Today’s lecture was “Longer Individual Presentation”. I looked forward about that because it was informative for the preparation of my presentation.

Important points;
1. If there is some relation, a topic is interesting
2. an agenda is necessary if contents are complex
3. balance of atmosphere(self image) and topic is important

Daniel;
It has clear structure and simple topic. It was many information, but I could not notice that. And costume is also good.

Niklas;
One slide was good.

Yoshi;
There is too much information in one presentation.


I thought, information does not mean informative, and evaluation is made by audience not by presenter.

Dead Celebrity Surprise

Today, I have a presentation: Dead Celebrity Surprise(DCS).

It was worse than I had expected.
The reason was;

1.It was not interesting for me(lack of my energy)
2.The frow of the text was not good
3.There were not so relevant picture to contents(lack of correspondence)
4.Not so enjoyable for me
5.My English was completely bad


Sometime, I forget I am worst English speaker in the class.
But I will try to make use of my strength.






Translation:
In many case, there are lots of long sentences in the object of translation.
We should change the sentence and divide them into a few sentences. We can also change the order clause in order that is easer to read.

And sometimes, the standard is not "right", but "clear".

Followings are other points;

*person=always , who
*many=many people
*on one's behalf of= always one's is other's
*repetition=noun of repeat

The use of this/that:
It represents distance about space/time. Of course, this is closer than that. But this and that are used at the same time as parallel:
This??, and that??
this=something you like, and that=something you do not like



Presentation:

We talked about looking and contents. For me, the best harvest in the talk was "audience",reason for the presentation. Because in my longer individual presentation, the audience is fixed, and I can tell preferences of some of them. It means we have to consider in choosing topic. I have decided my theme already, but I will make some reasoning about the topic for the audience.




Feedback of email English:

After the class, I asked some questions about feedback of my assignment.
These are the points:

*the difference between "this is why" and "this is a reason why".
"this is why" is reason.
"this is a reason why" is one of reasons.
and "this is a reason that" is wrong sentence.


*stuff
stuff is a collective noun as sheep.
stuff= a group of stuff
stuffs= groups of stuff

*reach/arrive
reach needs object(reach my home)
arrive needs nothing(arrive)




Anyway, I finished one of my big work in the class.
There are one more presentation. And today's topic was about the method of translation and presentation.

translation presentation

Today's class started from DSC, self presentation about three dead celebrities. And we had short presentation about each text of translation.

Concerning DSC, four people presented their parties.
It was so interesting because everyone devised the way of presentation to make fun! most impressive thing was everyone set a theme about party, and clarified it at the beginning of the presentations.



In the part of explanation of the assignment of translation, it was bad.

I prepared well, but it was not good. I think the reason was it was so long for the class, and I could not put my feeling into the reading.


Today, I have DCS, so I will try to overcome such a fault.

email feedback!

I received e-mail assignment feedback.
The point was not bad, but grade was "G".
What happend? I will ask teacher.


What I have learned was follwings:

*"have" can not be used with "yesterday"
*trouble is uncountable
* and/so is used succession of time
*"go" is need with preposition(from, in, to, on)
*if it is a trip, road should be trip.
*This was why /reason
*consider does not need prepositions
*one of **s? staff is singular?
*invoice "for"
*not plane, but flight(if it is a service)
*compensate "for"
*plane road>>flight
*ticket "for"
*next needs "the"
*confirm needs no preposition
*trouble "with"

Presentation!

Today’s class was EU presentation. This was the first one for me.

The problem is that this is the group presentation. Before presentation, I worried about we could do good presentation because our theme was completely the same as other groups, and we did not have any rehearsal, most of all, other members’ slide were so poor.

However, these worry was completely wrong. The presentation was really good!!! In my part, I stressed “We will show you different aspect” even if I was not sure my teammates prepared these topics. But they did.

Our presentation harmonized each other at high level. I appreciated them and I was appreciated by them, too. It was one of the best memory in SSE!

EU presentation

Today’s class was EU presentation. Funny thing is that , one group has completely same topic as us.

The point of presentation were: eye contact, eyesight(slide or presenter), self-confidence, and harmonization of tension!

After presentation, we had a meeting about presentation. It was so fun because the members were great!!!

I am looking forward to presentation!!!

Got E

I got “E” from the assignment! It is not good, in general. But for me, it was better than ever before.

Today’s class starts by two Dead Celebrity Surprise. They were great, one was so easy to listen, and the other was well organized.

About feed back of writing assignment, I noticed three points of bad sentences: too many words, long subjects, and passive subject.

“Too many words” means there are a lot of same meaning words in one sentence. It makes a reader hard to understand the text.

“long subjects” means subject is long to recognize which is subject and it often makes grammatical mistakes.

“passive subject” also relates to long subjects. It often long and makes wrong verb.


But today, I spoke more about than ever. It was enjoyable. I will keep this for end of the semester.

Robert Nozick,(1997)"Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?”

This is an interesting article that treats “capitalism”. It shows most anti-capitalists are intellectual people and this is caused by schooling system. Schooling system is a kind of society, where intellectuality is valued. It made intellectual children think they are top, but the confidences are sometimes broken in real society because the value is different. Real Society, capitalism, evaluate people by output or contribution for others. This value different from that in school system. The difference produces anti-capitalist.

This is ironical because school system is made for capitalism. To solve the problem, there are three choices: society changes like school, school changes like society, diminish the academic hierarchy. But each solution is not enough.

This article is interesting, but it is tricky because of ambiguous of words. If someone “oppose” capitalism, it does not necessarily mean reject capitalism completely. Sometimes people critic some aspects of capitalism, but few of them reject whole of that.

Moreover, he is deterministic in some aspect: individual act for each interest. It is not kind because I overlook some of them.

I think, for now, few people object “capitalism”. And in the first place, it is stupid to deny where we live, I think.

Politteness means not right?

In today’s Business English, there were three DCS. Surprisingly, all were so well! The topics were about novel prize, actress, and miracle. All were appropriate and intellectual. Moreover, their speeches were perfect.

In class, we discussed about “polite” sentences. That seems funny because if we made sentence more polite, it would be more complicated and ambiguous.

The key points were four: subjective, attitude, more likely, and do not judge. Possibly, it seems that sleep time for me….

Tutorial

Today, I had a tutorial with the teacher of Business English course. The tutorial was one part of the course and every student has change to get individual advices for improve his/her English.

In the tutorial, teacher said “I think you have difficulty in passing this course”. I got shocked about that, but it was not so strong because I had expected to be said about that. But he said next “But I recommend you to stay the class, because it is good chance for you to improve your English. What do you think?” Of course I said “Yes, I want to stay the course!” Though the comment of the teacher was critical, I was happy because I can continue the course.

After that, I asked him about how to improve my English skills: writing, reading, listening, and speaking. I used Power Point for meeting, and this helped me to describe what I wanted to say.

About reading and writing, he recommended to keep diary or blog, and read a lot. About listening he said to listen with reading script. About speaking or discussion, he told me two things: make questions before class, make a habit of thinking “why?”.

He said there was no shortcut of improving English. I will try industriously to improve my skills by making most of his advices.

“Politics and English Language”

Today's class was "In-class writing". There was no lecture, only examination about “Politics and English Language” written by George Orwell. He was a famous English writer who worked novels, polemics, journalism, memoir and critical essays.

The exam was not difficult for me because I had prepared for 5 hours before class with making summary and answering the questions in text. However, I did not well because I could not write logically; what I noticed after class.

To write logically is more difficult than to write English, of course, but the skill can be improved in other language. I will study and learn more.

“Ehrenreich feedback”

It was a week from last attendance to today’s business English class. Today’s title was “Ehrenreich feedback”, return of in-class writing test. However, we mainly discussed about some mistakes of sentences and a pun, because the result was returned at the last time of the class.

In the discussion about checking sentences, I felt my lack of vocabulary because I could not understand some of sentences. Besides, I ashamed I did not ask fluently or collect grammar. Other student, probably Swedish, spoke English so well and they adjusted to presentation. They not only pointed mistakes but also made another sentences and suggested in class. I did not have such ideas, and I will try next class.

After discussion, teacher explained about a pun; a joke that involves a play on words and fact that words can be ambiguous. It might be fun for English speaker, but for me, it was not fun because I could not understand some of them.

Fortunately, I will have a short meeting with teacher on next Monday. I will ask how to improve and train my English.


URL:http://user.aol.com/punamerica/

essay about “Finding a Coach in the Land of Oz”

Today’s class was ” In-class writing”, we only had a test, this is first one for me in SSE. The test was to write an essay about “Finding a Coach in the Land of Oz”, which we read in previous class. We had told a form of the test, which had 4 questions and we could choose one of them, but not told the questions. Of course, we could not bring the script in the exam.

In the test, I have finished early than I had expected. I think it is done because of two reasons. First, I had reread the text and prepared for the test in this morning, with making summery of the essay and answers to questions in course resume. Second, in first part of the test, I made structure of my essay and share number of words because essay had to have 300-400 words.

Next two classes, I can not attend because of a job ceremony in Japan. See you the week after the next!