Is English necessary for today’s Japanese workers?

from the Mutantfrog Travelogue: Is English necessary for today’s Japanese workers? via Global Voices Online

What do you think of this policy? I find it very disturbing. It is one thing to chose to learn a language because you think it will help your career or because you just want to. Compulsion is another matter.

Global Voices Online is an international network of bloggers and "citizen journalists" that translates and reports on blogs around the world. Do you follow any blogs in your native language? What are they about? Do you follow any English language blogs?

Another of its projects, Global Voices Advocacy, reports on and campaigns against internet censorship around the world. I think that forcing or requiring speakers to use a particular language is another kind of censorship. What do you think? What experience have you had with censorship?

"Globish" is another term for global English. In a more benign way, its rise is related to the story I opened with. Here's a story about it on NPR that you can also listen to: "Lingua Globa: How English Became 'Globish'"

Practice Parts Of Speech

The University of Nottingham has a nifty online tool where where students can practice multiple parts of speech (adverbs, articles, etc.) with any piece of 300 word text they, or their teacher, choose. And it can be used with several languages, including English.


It's just a matter of pasting the text in, clicking a button, and you're presented with the exercise.

How well do you know the English language?

An ode of English Plurals

We'll begin with a box,
And the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox
Becomes oxen, not oxes.

One fowl is a goose,
But two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose
Should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse
Or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house
Is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man
Is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan
Be called pen?

My city - Hong Kong

My City _ Hong Kong (HK)

Leding by the Ching Dynasty failed attempt to stop the British trading in opium, under the Teaty of Nanking in 1842, Hong Kong, being ceded to Britain, was just a collection of a small fishing village, there were some simple homes and few ships in the harbour, with merchant ships coming from all over the world, everything changed. Merchant came to open shops, hotel, restaurants, banks and trading companies.

  

1848s HK, 1869s HK

In the 1970s to 1990s, there are many smaller factories and trading companies in the city. The main industries in the Hong Kong area include garment manufacturing and electronic accessories producing. In fact, For finding the new life, a lot of people from the mainland China moved to Hong Kong after the World War II, where suddenly grew rapidly into a busy city, in not more twenty years, its population went from 3 million to over 7 million. 95% are Chinese, the rest are foreigners.

  

1950s HK, 1990s HK

Grammar Websites to Fix Students' Most Common Grammar Errors in Writing

Don't take this as a directive to obsess about grammar ~ or fuss over it when you should be writing drafts and concerned with content and organization. If you can identify, recognize and fix your own most common errors, that will take care of 95% of writing mistakes. Don't sweat the other 5% unless they interfere with meaning. You will also find that your error patterns are not as unique as you may think ~ most will fall into "most common" categories.

Mar 15, Grammar Websites to Fix Students' Most Common Grammar Errors in Writing

via Secrets of Teaching Writing Revealed on 3/15/10

Students will find English grammar help for their most common written grammar errors in selected grammar websites. The list is organized according to grammar and punctuation errors commonly found in students' and adults' writing.

Sending you flowers

Flowers for spring and brighten your day: snow outside; flowers on your monitor

http://www.procreo.jp/labo/flower_garden.swf

Click on the Flower Garden link. You will get a black page. Click your mouse anywhere on the page or click & drag your mouse over the black page

writing, culture and expectations

The Daughters at the String Shop by Meg Palladino

There are two daughters at the string shop in Osaka
The oldest daughter is sixteen years old and the youngest daughter is fourteen years old.
Japanese samurai kill their enemies with arrows.
The Japanese daughters at the string shop kill men with their eyes.


This poem is used to teach Japanese students how to write a proper essay. Japanese essay style is made up of the "ki" (introduction), "sho" (development), "ten" (turning point), and the "ketsu" (conclusion).


The cultural nature of writing makes teaching and evaluating it very difficult and learning to write in a new culture is one of the most difficult things about learning a new language. In some cultures, you only give main ideas and let the readers supply details. Other cultures will only give small details and let the reader decide the main idea. Other cultures take a long time building up the relationship between the writer and the reader before coming to the main point. In the Japanese style, the "ten" is used to get the reader's attention. American style is to give big ideas up front, provide the details and examples, and to repeat them again and again; the reader has few responsibilities.