May 04, 2005

I think that Japanese would make a good International language
1) Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Vietnamese intelligentsia can read the Sino-Japanese "Kanji" characters and almost make sense of Japanese newspapers.
2) Chinese (in its various forms, sharing the same script) is used by more people than any other language.  The large number of varities of spoken Chinese, and the existances of tones do not make it very suitable as an international language but, Japanese is an easy language for one in five of the world's population that use Kanji (this according to Chinese Japanophones that I have spoken to inJapan) .
3) Japanese is particularly easy to pronounce requiring no tones nor guttural nor dental fricative consonants.
4) The Chinese part of the language is agglutinative and built of only about 2000 bricks. The learning curve is steep while you are still learning these kanji, and then shallow once you have learned them, as opposed to endlessly medium-steep in the case of English.
5) There are few irregular verbs or irregular forms of any sort.
6) There is less of a connection between correct Japanese and wealth, and arguably, colonialism. The colonialism period of Japan was shorter, less genocidal, more localised, and far less persistent than that of the speakers of the current international language of favour.
7) Japanese word order is flexible, relying on suffixes to indicate subject object and case.
8) There are fewer tenses than in English
9) There is no gender.
10) There are no relative pronouns so that adjectival clauses can modify nouns directly, without the need for a relative  
English word order "I want a tool for hitting in nails"
Japanese word order "I want nail hitting tool"
English Word order "This is the place which she bought."
Japanese word order "This is she bought place."
The ease with which one can make adjectival clause is very convenient for learners who often lack vocabulary and have to rely on adjectival clauses to say what they mean.

November 16, 2004

I made a list of online materials for ESL learners, ones that I could recommend to students, and ones that I would like to include in my own teaching, homework, and web based trainging systems.

The factors that governed my choice are
1) That they should encourage fluency at least as much as accuracy, and stand on the fluency side of the fence. If accuracy is the main issue then any part of the web, any article in any magazine, blog or news station can be used for detailed reading. My own sentiments lean towards: extensive, rather than detailed, reading; aquisition rather than learning; and comprehensible input.
2) To that end input should either be simplified, interms of its grammar and lexicon, or contain multimedia cues to aid comprehension.
3) My current institutions focus upon the TOEIC encourages the use of input materials that have an oral component -- but not exclusively.
4) As far as possible the materials should be interesting, of course.

Materials and suggested ways of using them follow.

November 10, 2004

The more I think about the more I am of the opinion that the key to improving Japanese students' ability in English is in setting homework. Homework is however, the sore thumb of tertiary education in Japan; it is not set at levels required to ensure a educational effect, especially in the English education field. English requires a lot of study.

The factors influencing the lack of homework at Japanese universities may perhaps be divided into four of five groups: the three types of "customer" that universities service, and the two divisions within Japanese universities themselves. The three types of customer are: students, employers, and the Japanese government. One might add parents to this list, but it is my impression that students have a large say in the dispensation of parental funds. It is my impression that it is rare that a Japanese parent insists that their offspring attend any particular university upon the basis of the quality of service that it provides. Parents deserve to be in a fourth category of customer and perhaps they hold the key for improvement. I will deal with them at the end.

Of the main three customers that Japanese universities service, only one overtly encourages a level of homework sufficient to ensure an educational effect.

November 10, 2004

So what does the name of this site, "Eigodaigaku" mean anyway? Eigodagaku is made up two Japanese words, Eigo meaning English and daigaku, meaning university. So Eigodaigaku might be translated as "Englishuniversity".

Even until recently, and perhaps until this very day, there are many domain names available for non-English words. I am sure that it would be very difficult to purchase "Englishunviersity.com" (yep, someone has already purchased it) but I was spoilt for choice when I bought the domain name for this site. I also purchased a few others such as (with the English translation and Web Sites, not necessarily recommended, in brackets): chattoru-mu.com (chatroom.com) webucamu.com (webcam.com) and both bulogu.com and burogu.com (blog.com) by way of investment. I think that these Internet related words may be here to stay and will become more popular in the future, at least on the Internet.

If you are a non-English speaker then I bet there are some domain names in your language that are not yet taken but may be of value in the future. I would recommend domains ending in "dot com" if you want to have a website that is internationally recognised. You can see if a domain is available and even purchase it at sites such as godaddy.com (I am not affiliated in any way.)

November 10, 2004

I think that one of the reasons why I have not been posting to my blog at "nihonbunka.com/eigodaigaku" all that much is because the  site is in Japanese. I have created an English version of my blog in the hope that I will write more. Until now I had been using a category in my Japanese language blog for English language articles. I never felt that there would be many English speaking visitors however, since the banner and side bars remained in Japanese. 

May 16, 2003

You all know "Tamori." He is the man that hosts "Waratte Iitomo." Tamori is a guy (about 50 years old) from Fukuoka who wears dark glasses. When he first became famous he was a comedian. He made people laugh by pretending to talk in foreign languages. He would speak in German, French, Russian, Chinese - but only pretend. In fact he couldn't speak any of these languages, he just pretended to speak them. He made noises that sounded like he could speak in these languages. He was so funny it was painful. 

Have you tried being Tamori? For example, we all know what the annoucers from North Korea sound like. Try impersonating an announcer from Noth Korea! "Hahransah, kmamna janmara samni dah!" That is not North Korean. But it may sound like North Korean if you try. Tamori could do it. He could sound like he was speaking in French, Thai, German and Russian. Can you?

It is very difficult. In a way it should be the easiest thing in the world. To speak in a different language only by impersonating the sounds. No need to worry about grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary. No need to worry if it does not sound right. Just speak the way another language sounds to you. But in fact it is very difficult. We can all say "ju teimu" (French?) or "she she" (Chinese?) but when we try to say gobledigook ("detarame") it is very difficult. What is the problem?

The problem is that we don't like to say things that have no meaning. We find it really difficult to speak without saying anything. We hate to say just sounds. If we do not know what we are saying it is painful, difficult, embarassing. Some people say to me that they think that English is difficult. I say that they are wrong. The difficult thing is not knowing English vocabulary (1000 words is plenty - and more than half of them are loan words -- "gairaigo"). It is not difficult to learn English grammar. All you really need to remember is the word order: Subject Verb Object.

So what is difficult about speaking English? It is difficult to let go of your own language. It is difficult to jump off that diving board, from meaning into a sea of non-meaning. It is only natural to feel a sense of panic and to think, "Aaaah, I don't know what I am saying!" But if you can get over this feeling then you are half way to being able to speak English. Try to practice saying gobbledygook (chinpunkanpun, tawagoto, nansensu). When you can be Tamori, you can forget your embarassment, forget your shyness, and just speak English. Speaking English is easy. Take it from me. I speak really bad Japanese.

Photo copyright © 2003 Curtis Knapp

April 24, 2003

Weblogs, the best thing since sliced bread, they said. The first thing I did was investigate. Please have a look at this link first. And it certainly seemed that there was a lot goining on on the Weblog front. So I decided to make my own weblog.