How do you mark this??

Here's a script that came into my hands, written by three Japanese junior high school students in their second year of learning English. I've anonymised the actors’ names and translated the stage directions, but otherwise it’s exactly as written.

2A Rosencranz Guildenstern Estragon 

Let’s go to London

Rosencranz	They arrived in London.
	It became the London Keion Stage
Guildenstern	Passworld when I take a photograph.
	Repeat after me.
	The sky of London.
	The taxi of London.
	The English of London.
	We who are in London.
Estragon	Ok!
	The sky of London.
	The taxi of London.
	The English of London.
	We who are in London.
	Wow!! we take nice picture ★三
Rosencranz	Then Let's go sightseeing!
	They're going to tell you about Big Ben!
Guildenstern	This is Big Ben!
	The Houses of Parliament Connect to the Big Ben.
	Very famous tourist attraction.
Estragon	Let's take a picture!!
Guildenstern	Repeat after me.
	we who are looking at Big Ben!!
Estragon	We who are looking at Big Ben!!
	Wow! nice picture again.
Rosencranz	It's time to finish
All together-r-r!!
Good bye 

I honestly think, if Berkoff had added Amerika to his Kafka adaptions, it would have looked a lot like this.

But seriously—how the hell am I supposed to “mark” and “correct” this thing?

Edward Snowden’s (not-so-secret) Secret Superpower

I’ve nothing to hide, but please don’t ask about the midget porn.

I’ll let you into an open secret. Lie-detectors (polygraphs) don’t detect lies: they elicit confessions. They’re the juju in a Nacirema witchdoctor ritual, designed to soften you up before the interrogation (or, as they like to call it, the post-test interview).

Why my dog comes first

I'm not publicly announcing this yet, but this blog only has two followers so what the heck.

Here's a slideshow essay I made. It's basically a rant about how we teach formal grammar. Feedback is very much appreciated.



Why did I do it as a slideshow? Well, who has the patience to read a blogpost these days? The pamphleteer is long dead. If you have a message you want to promote, it's up to you to make the reader's life as easy as possible, and if that means speech bubbles and a cute dog, so be it.

Removing a Facebook curse

We all know how to protect ourselves on-line from viruses and fraudsters. But what about curses? You see a perfectly-innocent looking message like:

AN ACCURATE HOROSCOPE FOR THE WHOLE YEAR 2013! THIS IS SO DEAD ON TO ME IT'S SCARY...

And before you know it, you've read the line that says:

7 years of bad luck if you do not share this post.

And it's too late! Either spread the evil, or suffer 7 years of bad luck. (Note, the above line is for illustrative purposes only, and is magically inert. I've had it curse-checked.)

Well, I broke a mirror when I was 10, and I can tell you that puberty sucked for me. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. So I did a little research, and it turns out that it is, in fact, possible to break the chain of evil.

No more nukes?

Somebody asked me, “Should Japan switch its nukes back on?”  Here's my answer.

It’s such a shame. Geology notwithstanding, Japan should be the ideal place to build nuclear power stations. Few nations have more to gain from nuclear power, and the Japanese values of safety, cleanliness, and attention to detail are exactly what is needed to operate a nuclear power station safely. But it has a cultural Achilles’ heel so severe that the only question still worth asking is: “When, and how are we going to shut these nukes down?”  (Read more...)

Don't get sick in Grimsby

This is what they missed
(©2010, James Heilman, MD; CC-BY-SA 3.0)

We're visiting family in Grimsby, England. On Friday, Chisako came down with a high fever and sore throat, so we took her to hospital to get her checked out.

The doctors were mystified by her condition. They put her in an isolation ward, and tested her for malaria (even though she hasn't been to a malaria region), typhus, and goodness knows what else. They X-rayed her, ultra-sounded her, and swabbed every orifice. Finally, on the fourth day, in sheer desperation, they tried listening to the patient:

"Why don't you look down my throat? I think it's tonsillitis."

"Er ..." shines the flashlight from his cellphone down her throat "Yes, you're right. It's tonsillitis. That's solved the mystery. I'll get your discharge papers."

what

the

fuck

I wouldn't mind so much but, as Japanese residents, we have to pay for our NHS treatment. Three unnecessary nights in an isolation ward and dozens of unnecessary tests won't come cheap. We have travel insurance, of course, but that only pays for treatment that is medically necessary.

Mistakes happen. If it was just that one simple oversight, I guess we could forgive them. But everything was just so sloppy. The nurses couldn't even insert a cannula or mount a drip correctly. When Chisako was moved to isolation, the ward that she left had no idea where she was. I could go on....

I know that the NHS has some excellent, world class hospitals. The Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby is not one of them. In fact, while Chisako was in hospital, it was announced that parts of the hospital would be closed after inspectors found that hundreds of patients were dying every year due to inadequate care.
If Chisako has a relapse, I'll hire a taxi and we'll go to Scunthorpe.

---

ADDENDUM
In response to comments on Facebook:

1. I got the photo on Wikipedia. It's not Chisako.

2. Many thanks to well-wishers. Chisako's doing well.

Love Japanese. Hate kanji.

On the left: an ordinary box of Hello Kitty strawberry flavor Pocky sticks. Perfect for when you grow tired of sushi.

On the right: a cute little kid's cartoon on the back of the packet. It's a simple story of a game of hide-and-seek gone wrong.

Below: the last frame from of the cartoon, with the punchline, "Orirarenaku nacchatta yo..." which I'd translate as, "Oh no! I can't get down!"

"Oh no! I can't get down!"

Now, you're probably thinking, "What a long word that is!" But that's because long words are difficult in English. In Japanese, long words are easy, because long words are really just short words with bits added on the end in a systematic fashion.

In this case:

• the stem is oriru which, among other things, means (I) get down.
• orirareru means (I) can get down.
• orirarenai means (I) can't get down.
• orirarenaku naru means (I) become / will become unable to get down.
• orirarenaku nacchau means Oh no. (I) become / will become unable to get down.
• orirarenaku nacchatta means Oh no. (I) became unable to get down.

The yo at the end is a acts like an exclamation mark.

The nice thing is that we can mix and match these different endings in pretty much any way we want:

• orinai  means (I) don't get down.
• orita means (I) got down.
• orichatta means Oh no. (I) got down.
• oriteinakatta yo means (I) wasn't getting down!
• and so on ...

If you're a connoisseur of programming languages, you'll recognise this as being the much-desired property of orthogonality, which makes languages both expressive and easy to learn.

Sadly, I can only see the beauty and simplicity of Japanese on packs of Pocky sticks, because it's for kids and is therefore written in phonetic script.  Out in the real world, they'd write it like this:

降りられなくなっちゃったよ。

And that first symbol, 降, is one of the many hundreds I still have to learn before I can even begin to make sense of a paragraph in a normal book. Makes me want to weep.

Another Booze Taste-Test

The question we are answering in this taste test is: does a ¥105 can of happoushu (synthetic beer-flavored drink) taste noticably better than an ¥88 can?

A Taste-Test Comparison of a Popular Japanese Beer and its Synthetic Analogue

A Taste-Test Comparison of a Popular Japanese Beer and its Synthetic Analogue

McArthur, C. S.

Abstract

In a blind taste-test, a cheaper, beer flavour alcoholic drink was rated better than the real thing. However, this study lacked statistical power, and further research is needed.

PeTA: less shock, more honesty please

I'm angry with PeTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). I'm angry that they exaggerate for shock value, and that they are undermining the credibility of an important cause.

Living with Radiation

Today I found another deranged note had been pushed under my door. I'm putting this out there in the hope someone can identify the writer and get them the psychiatric help they need. I'd also like to know how they got that photo of my wife....

---

Hello Kitty leads the way

I'm often asked whether Japan's safe. [<- Try clicking the links.] The short answer is: no, it's dangerous. If you're caught out in the rain without protection, you can be dead within hours. But it's still a fascinating land of contrasts and there's money to be made, so if you fancy a visit don't let the radiation deter you. Do as the survivors do, and you too can make it through your time in the land of the rising Sieverts without knocking too many years off your life expectancy.

Tip 1: Wear your protective gear when you go out.

Not part of the solution

DISCLAIMER

None of the following is true.  I just found it scrawled on a piece of paper slipped under my door.   I publish it for curiosity's sake, but take my advice and don't believe a word of it.  It's just a long, bad-tempered rant from a deranged individual who has clearly never seen the excellent teaching practice going on in real classrooms.

---

To-odo ando Furoggu wento fo-o a rongu wo-oku.

If you can read that sentence, you've been in Japan way too long.

Back Open for Business

It's the summer holidays, and I seem to be doing nothing but write, but it's all on other people's websites!  Debito Arudo, English Language & Usage, Dave Sperling, et al are getting all the benefit of my hard work.  Not to mention dear, sweet, Kirsty, who gets all my juices flowing with such interesting questions.

So henceforth, if I see something I wanna' write about, I'll be sure to blog about it too.  I'll start by posting a few things I've got stashed away somewhere.

TTFN!

Peter

Corporatese Exam

“Our proactive reengineering initiative for training is going to be championed by our best-of-breed service partners, whose experiential…”

One of my students, who works at a multinational company, gets emails like this all the time. She brings them in, I put them on the whiteboard, and we go through them line-by-line, trying to figure out what the hell her boss meant.

Said multinational is paying for the lessons, and they asked me to set an end of year exam. I wanted to make it a test of the English they actually use so, for this student, I based her test on a genuine corporate email that came my way. How would you do?

Should we set homework?

This is a response to the article Homework: Winning the Learning Battle, Losing the Learning War by Pamela J. Stewart at The Huffington Post. She argues that, in the long term, homework does more harm than good because it kills the love of learning:

Who else was an avid reader until the inception of mandatory “summer reading”? Who had an aptitude for math and numbers until the cryptic or rote worksheets started coming home in droves? And who couldn't be kept from writing little stories on any paper within reach until writing became an arduous task[…]?

I wish I could agree, but there is a problem. I am in the business of teaching skills, not facts, and skills take practice. Can I give my students all the practice they need in lesson time? I wish!

For me, the problem isn’t with homework per se; it's with assignments like this:

Complete these sentences.  Use the verb like or likes:
I: I    like    cheese.
you: You            cheese.
he: He            cheese.
she: She            cheese.
it: It            cheese.
the mouse: The mouse            cheese.
we:                       cheese.
they:                                 .

You can buy exercise books full of this stuff: two pages per grammar point. You can set them to do in class or for homework. They are designed to be as easy as possible, and yet some kids still write nonsense like:

the mouse: The mouse    like    cheese.
we:    like       like    cheese.
they:    like       like       like   .

I know they can do better than that. Even if they don’t understand, they can at least raise a hand. But that's not the point: they’re just trying to get the whole tedious business over with. They are not (please forgive the buzzword) engaged.

In contrast, do music teachers ever say, “For homework, play this piece through ten times, without paying the slightest attention to the sounds you’re making.” I don’t think so. I think they say, “If you practise hard, you can master this piece by next week. This passage is difficult, so you’ll need to spend a lot of time on it. Here's how it should sound….” They would not accept the attitude of the student who mindlessly wrote    like    ten times.

Daniel Pink famously wrote that the keys to motivation are: autonomy, mastery and purpose. If we give them drudge work, they become drudges. We need to give them engaging exercises — maybe a puzzle to solve — and set clear, realistic goals for levels of attainment. We can give guidance on how to get there, but with the understanding that, ultimately, they are responsible for their own learning outcomes.

So much for lofty ideals. As a humble Assistant Language Teacher (emphasis: Assistant) of only modest experience, what can I do?

One thing I have tried to do is devise interesting worksheets: puzzles, quizzes and so on. Looking back I notice that, quite by chance, some of these worksheets also give students a sense of progress and mastery. When I look at the end-of-year exam scripts, I notice that these are the ones that seem to have got best results. So that’s something I can do more of.

The other I can do is: let students know that I expect engagement. I think there are cultural issues here. While mastery and perfection are enormously valued in Japan, in day-to-day matters it seems that quantity of effort — or the appearance thereof — is valued over outcome. The kid who wrote    like    ten times is all too often allowed to believe that he has done something of value. Well, I guess I can call them out on that. As one teacher wrote on Facebook:

[…] if I suspect completing without engagement … I ask students: “Do you want to skip homework then, because there is no point you doing it like this.” They’ll almost 100% of the time say, “No, I want to do better.” and get on it….

As for me, as a schoolboy I was the ultimate homework shirker. But when I did make an effort I was always totally engaged, which I guess is what got me into University. I can’t say whether my case supports or detracts from Stewart’s argument, but I think it shows there are different levels of disengagement.

England in August

Update: included 25th–26th at Travelodge.

We're going to England in ... um ... 3½ days. Our full itinerary is:

1st August — Narita to Cambridge

• 04:00 BST (12:00 JST) Take off from Narita Airport, Terminal 1 on Aeroflot flight SU582 
• 19:55 BST (03:55 JST) Land at Heathrow Airport, Terminal 2 
• 21:10 leave Heathrow Airport on National Express coach 797 
• 23:50 arrive Cambridge

1st–14th August — Cambridge

Stay with Tim & Vicky in Cambridge. Thanks guys!

14th August — Cambridge to Grimsby

Thanks for the lift, Phil!

14th–23rd August — Grimsby

Stay in Grimsby with Mum. Thanks for the car keys, Mum!

19th August — Mum's wedding

23rd August — Grimsby to Birmingham

• 07:15 leave Grimsby on National Express coach 339 
• 12:10 arrive Birmingham Coach Station 

23rd–26th August — Birmingham 

• 23rd–25th stay with Chisa's friend, Huaming
• 25th–26th stay at Birmingham Central Bull Ring Travelodge

26th–27th August — Birmingham to Narita

• 05:00 BST leave Birmingham on National Express coach 210 
• 07:40 BST arrive Heathrow Airport 
• 10:35 BST (18:35 JST) Take off from Heathrow Airport, Terminal 2 on Aeroflot flight SU581 
• 10:20 JST (02:20 BST) land the next day at Narita Airport, Terminal 1

And here's the map:

View August in England in a larger map

Speech 3

Here's the two-minute dialogue.  This time I've ripped off The Two Ronnies:

It still needs some work.  The Fuji-san joke (Fuji-san can either mean mount Fuji or Mr Fuji) is lame, and I think most people will miss the "makes us ... with a baseball bat" double meaning.

QUIZ SHOW

A: What is your name?

B: [silence]

A: And in this quiz, you must not answer the question I ask. You must answer the previous question. Oh ... er ... just a moment. I need to mark your answers here. Which pencil is mine?

B: My name’s [B’s name].

A: And your time starts … now. Please complete this line of Shakespeare: “To be, or not to be...”.

B: It’s 4B.

A: What is the purpose of AKB48?

B: That is the question.

A: What is the Japanese diet?

B: They exist to perform and entertain people in Tokyo. The least popular members are removed in elections.

A: What is a yokozuna?

B: A lot of fish, rice and soybeans.

A: I am a very fat man with long hair. I sometimes put on strange clothes and appear on TV. I make a lot of money from cellphones. Who am I?

B: A champion sumo wrestler.

A: What is the largest and most famous mountain in Japan?

B: Matsuko Delux.

A: And finally, please describe your sports teacher.

B: Fuji-san.

A: Time’s up! That’s the end of the quiz ... and the end of our skit. How do you think it went? Did our English teacher prepare us well?

B: He makes us practice with a baseball bat until we get it right.

Speech 2

Here's the more serious speech:

WHOSE ENGLISH IS IT ANYWAY?

Our previous High School ALT worked hard, teaching us how to pronounce words like ADD-ress and to-MAY-der correctly.  Now our new ALT tells us that everything we learnt is wrong.  “Don’t say ADD-ress.  Say uh-DRESS.” he tells us.  “Not tuh-MAY-der.  tuh-MAA-toe”.

So which one is correct?  It seems that they both are.  The first one taught us American English, and the second one British English.  This is very confusing for us poor Japanese.  We don’t have this problem in say, Maths or Geography.  We don’t learn that two plus two is four in the first year, and two plus two is five in the second year.

If it was just the pronunciation that was different, I wouldn’t mind, but the grammar changes too!  The old ALT said, “I lost my keys!”, but the new one says, “I’ve lost my keys.”  Actually, they’re both wrong.  They didn’t lose them.  We hid their keys in ... hmm ... maybe you don’t need to know about that.

But why stop at British or American English?  For instance, have you heard of Nigerian Pidgin?  It’s the lingua franca of Nigeria, and it’s a dialect of English.  There are about eighty million speakers of Nigerian Pidgin.  That’s twenty million more than the population of the UK.

So why can’t there be one official version of English?  One version that we can all agree on?  Actually, the French tried that.  There is an organization called The French Academy which decides what is French, and what is just slang and dialect.  The only problem is, nobody actually speaks Academy French.  The most recent edition of the Academy Dictionary was published in 1935.  

Altogether, there are maybe three-or-four hundred million native speakers of English, and more than a billion people who speak English as a second language.  So I wonder, if there are more non-native speakers than native speakers, and if even the native speakers can’t agree on how to speak English, why must I, as a Japanese person, copy native speakers?  [In a strong Japanese accent.]  Maybe I should be proud to speak English like a true Japanese.  Then “Nihonglish” can receive the recognition it deserves as a dialect of English.

New Look

smug

I call this look "recycled Japanese--Hawaiian".

Japanese men on holiday in Hawaii buy clothes that fit me much better than their original owners. I pick them up for a song from the 2nd hand shop.

Speech 1

I'm currently writing some speeches for Junior High School students to deliver in a speech contest. I need a sober 3-minute speech, an amusing 3-minute speech, and a 2-minute dialogue.

Speech-writing is hard. For the amusing 3-minute speech, I've resorted to ripping off Eddie Izzard.



So here's the draft speech. I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS!

Never Trust A Monkey

The first page of my English textbook has useful sentences like, “The mouse is under the table.” I tried using this when I went to England. “The train to Liverpool, right? Is this it? … Now? … In 5 minutes? Okay, thanks, and the mouse is under the table.”

It didn’t go well. People were shouting, “Mouse!? What mouse? Where is the mouse?” "Where is the mouse? Where is the mouse? Er … the mouse is under the table." "Table? What table? Where is the table?" "Er … the table is … above … the mouse?"

So that was my first lesson in English conversation: only say, "There's a mouse under the table." when there is a mouse under the table. The other sentences in my book were, "The cat is on the chair." which was okay, and "The monkey is on the branch." That sentence was VERY difficult to use. I solved the problem by walking through the woods with a cat, a mouse, a monkey and a chair. “Quick! Someone’s coming. Cat: sit on the chair. Mouse: hide under the table. Monkey: climb on the branch. Hurry, hurry! Okay. I’ve got my speech ready here. *ahem* Hello. I’m Japanese. I’m on vacation. It’s beautiful here! The scenery … the trees … the mouse is under the table, the cat is on the chair, and the monkey is … gone.” Because he was a monkey. He didn’t want to wait on the branch. He wanted to go and do monkey things.

I was in trouble. Without the monkey, I couldn’t finish my speech. Where was he? “Erm … er … did you see a monkey?” “Yes, I did! What a surprise it was. Last time I saw a monkey near here was in the 80s. I was a boy, then and….” … and he wouldn’t stop talking!

So here is what I learnt: if you want to have an English conversation, the most important skills are asking questions and listening. And never trust a monkey.