Return from a Seminar Camp

I was invited out to a seminar camp with a pair of laboratories this weekend from Ishinomaki University, which is a ways out from Sendai. The 2 labs that went did work in Nano-Micro technology and another is in Micro-biology. The aim was to get an exchange of ideas going by having the students make presentations to each other.

One of the professors at the university was a graduate from our lab and wanted an English speaker to do a presentation in English at the seminar. As for me, the professor told me that could present anything I wanted. I decided to do a talk based on my language essay to make my talk something completly different.

The students I was presenting to were undergrads, mostly in their 4th year doing their graduaion projects. At first, I thought I made a mistake on my presentation topic because initially, I thought I would be presenting it to masters students that would participate in international conferences. But it turned out to be a good topic anyway.

What I have so far learned from my experiences in Japan is that for the most part, Japanese students can't present well at all. I sit through 4 presentations every weekend and attend more presentations by students in other labs during classes (ie. paper presentations). What bugs me the most about presentations from Japanese students is that they have a horrible tendency to either read from a script (or even straight out of a paper) or they memorize what they want to say. Either way, when they present, their brains are off and this is a bad thing... especially when it comes to audience interaction (ie. answering questions or checking to make sure they understand what they are talking about).

So anyways, I did make my presentation and the response was well recieved. I would go on to explaining them how learning a new language is also about learning how to think in that language. They were exceptionally intreagued at the question I posed at them on how they think in Japanese. The argument being that not every word they want to say is chosen in advance but selected in a flow as they speak.

Understanding this flow in a new language is imperative to learning a new language. It also requires that the speaker to think in that language, which something that does not happen when you memorize particular lines from a text book... which is exactly how students in Japan are taught English. I do feel somewhat fortunate that I am a product of the Canadian education system (in the sense that students are encouraged to think, more so than places, say in Japan).

It seems that as a resut of my presentations, the professors from each respective labs have decided that they are going to implement either an "English hour" or "English day" in their labs to encourage students to speak English using my technique. The students, at first were cold to the idea, but in the end they were pretty enthusiastic about it-- they would be dropping the old method of learning English behind them and looking forward to immersing themselves in the English language. I am very glad that they've been inspired... because everything starts with a little inspiration. I can only hope that their linguistic ambitions becomes fruitfuly prosperous.