A great quote for teachers

Was listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer on Hay House Radio, and he mentioned a time when he was a graduate teaching assistant and students were not willing to take his advise. He was responding to a nutritionist whose clients wouldn't listen to her. I've heard the same kind of story from the Nursing profs here. They tell their patients to lose weight or stop smoking, and they don't.

The quote he used was from A Course in Miracles.

Infinite patience produces immediate effects.

If we are in possession of infinite patience, immediate effects will come of their own. I encourage, berate, sell, and proselytise, and I know I reach some learners, because they show obvious movement and results. But the majority does not show their progress in any obvious ways. I just got some first semester course evaluation results back from the Academic Affairs Division at the school, and the results were pretty positive, showing that the classes were of benefit to many of the students, and when the are not so overwhelmed with work from their major courses, maybe they'll remember some of the things we did in class.

Infinite patience...

Center Exam Listening 2, センター試験 英語リスニング、２４９人が再試験（毎日新聞） - Yahoo!ニュース

According to this article 494,350 people took the listening test. 222 retook it because of mechanical trouble. That is also 180 out of 783 test sites that had retakers. That means that a test taker has a 0.045% chance of getting a bad player. 22% of the test sites had to give a retake for the same reason. Major success, I'd say!

センター試験　英語リスニング、２４９人が再試験（毎日新聞） - Yahoo!ニュース

大学入試 , Center Exam English Listening

Here it is again! The headline being that 249 people, actually only 222, had to retake the listening portion of the English Center Exam because of a mechanical failure instead of touting the technological, logistical miracle of the whole thing. What is it with "news"? It's gloom and despair all the time.
大学入試 - Yahoo!ニュース

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

Didn't take history too long to make up its mind about this one.
HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

Teachers struggle to teach in English : The Language Connection : Features : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri)

There's a quote in here from the Education Ministry that says that "a ministry official says '70 percent' " of high school English teachers can teach English classes in English. Where do they get the figures? I can't argue, because I don't have any data, but where is theirs to back up these claims?

Teachers struggle to teach in English : The Language Connection : Features : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri)

I'm 41 according to RealAge Test

My chronological age is 48.6 years old, but RealAge Test says that my real age is 41.1 as a result of my good genes, diet, exercise, habits, and relationships. The results suggested that I do some things like eat more fruit and get a better car. I eat very little fruit, and I drive a small truck with no airbags. I will get more fruit, but I like my truck. They also suggested that I eat more whole grains. It must have been how I answered the questionnaire or something, but I challenge anyone to eat more whole grain and not gain weight. I eat veerrry little processed flour or rice and lots of rice. Maybe I don't understand the meaning of "one serving" or something.

Well, I'm going to go enjoy my refound youth.

Started a small newsletter for students

Started publishing a small newsletter for students. It's called Engzine, and I wrote it so that I could communicate better with my students, even though it may be one sided. I included a couple of short pieces and a couple of longer pieces, as well as a crossword puzzle and details on a contest that I am conducting. It is a real short one where the students have to write the names of four states that begin with the letter A, and bring it to a specific place at a specific time. Then the first ten students will get a prize. I hope this will a little reading for real purposes to their lives and give them a little fun during exam week.

High school education to include English taught in English, more math, chemistry - The Mainichi Daily News

I've looked around on the Internet for a copy of this document and other supporting documents, but haven't been successful, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the reporting here. I will use this article's content, though, to ask some questions.

Under the revised curriculum, English teaching will focus more on speaking and listening, aiming at moving away from grammar and translation-oriented education.

There is such confusion about what is really going on in classrooms. I have never seen any studies that show that there is grammar and translation education happening at schools at all. There are textbooks that the ministry approves, and there are guidelines that the ministry publishes, but what is happening in classes? What are students really learning? There are so many questions about what students are learning, how can they make reasonable decisions about what to change if they don't know what is happening in the first place?

The number of words students are required to learn will be expanded to 1,800, 500 more than in the current guidelines, bringing the total vocabulary learned in high school and junior high school to 3,000 words.

More questions. What does, "required to learn," mean? Does it mean that if they don't learn them they don't graduate? Hardly! Even if we accept that they only need to know the junior high words in their root form, hardly anyone would get into a college. Who needs to learn these words? What if they only learn 1799? What does words mean? How do they define this term? Are they root words, like act? For this word there are noun forms, a verb form, an adjective form and an adverb form. So does this count as one word or several?

English classes will be taught primarily in English.

In what language are English classes primarily being taught in now? How does the ministry know this, anecdotal accounts? Is teacher training included in this plan? The article says that the plan will be implemented for students entering high school in 2013. Will they spend the next three years training teachers to teach speaking? Will they change evaluation policies to reflect these changes in testing? My guess is that this would be so incredibly time consuming and costly as to be impossible.

Let's assume that the ministry does not have a very good idea about what they are making rules about because they have not done the research. What is the motivation? Window dressing for the rest of the world?

Somebody help me out here, because I don't know the answers to any of these questions, and I think any one of them is really important to students and teachers alike.

High school education to include English taught in English, more math, chemistry - The Mainichi Daily News