New Term

Hi everyone
The new term is under way, and the students are settling back in well.

This term we are joined once a week by some trainee TESOL (Teaching of English as a second language) teachers from Otago university. We had a welcome party for them last week, and it was great to see our KTC students getting a chance to practice all their conversation skills that they have been developing. They really have come a long way in the last three months.

It is also great to have some young and dynamic New Zealanders (and some from around the world) for the KTC students to get to know, and I hope some more permanent friendships arise from this exchange. In any case, it is good to have some fresh ideas and new voices each week.

We have new maths and mechanics teachers this term too, so a lot of new faces and voices for the students to adjust to, but they appear to be taking it all in their stride.

If any of the host families are concerned about their student's development or progress at the polytechnic, please do not hesitate to contact me.

At the same time, we also have three students from last year's C.E.E programme who have returned for two weeks to get some industry experience. I am glad to see that the programme is having a lasting effect on the lives of the students, and that they feel motivated enough to want to return to Dunedin.

Winter holidays

Well, it has been a month since I last posted! Sorry about that; gradually I am getting myself organised and hopefully there will be more blogs in the near future.

I hope the homestays are going well. The students seem happy in class, so I take that to mean they are being well looked after.

The students are making good progress. They are talking more fluently and confidently in class - I hope they are taking this ability home and using it in the homestay.

The engineering classes are also going well. There is a lot of new specialised vocabulary for the students to learn, but they are coping so far.

The winter holidays are coming! Because of the special nature of the C.E.E programme, our holidays differ slightly from the rest of the Polytechnic students. We will be having normal classes from Monday to Wednesday next week, and then morning classes on Thursday and Friday.

There will be no classes between 5th - 16th July, but the classroom will be open and I will be here. The students are welcome to come in and use the facilities to study or relax.

Please remember that if you plan to go away, with or without your student, let Anna the homestay co-ordinator know as early as possible.

Once again, do not hesitate to contact us if there are any issues you are concerned about.

Mike's Farewell Party

Friday was Mike's last official day teaching at the Polytechnic, so we had a lunchtime "party". The students had bought flowers and gifts for Mike, and some of the students had been busy making cakes with their host families. Mike's wife made a Japanese curry dish, and our Japanese liaisons provided salad and sushi as well, so we ended up with a real feast!

Mike was really glad to receive so many gifts, and even seemed a little lost for words - very unlike him!

We are all sorry to see Mike finish, and we wish him well in his "new life" in Japan. Perhaps he will still find time occasionally to contribute to this blog??!!

Mike has been such a big presence at the Polytechnic and especially in making the C.E.E programme so successful. I know that it will be impossible to fill his boots, but I hope that I can make some small contribution towards keeping the programme running smoothly. I look forward to everyone's continued support.

I'll put some photos of the party on as soon as I can get some from the students!
Cheers
Nathan

Electrical Class

The students have been starting their engineering classes. Yesterday, Les Wong took them for their first Electrical class. It went really well and all of the students said that they enjoyed it. Today, the students had their first Computing class with Paul Admiraal. The students enjoyed getting use to computing by playing "Lightbot." The students had to move a man around squares and light light bulbs.

Here's a photo of the Electrical class.

Starting conversations

The homework for tonight was for the students to go home and try to initiate a conversation. Today is "Children's Day" in Japan, which is......... - your student will say, "oh, hey, did you know that it's Children's Day in Japan, today?"

Hopefully, you will say, "oh, no, what's that?" and then they're off!

We also looked at specific situations in the homestay where initiation by the student could happen. For example, you are drinking a cup of coffee, or you have just arrived home, or yawning.

Conversational Structure

Today, in class we learnt how to structure a conversation.

If the question is; what did you do today in Jean's class, then the format of the response should be something similar to:

General - well, today I learnt about text language

Detail - for example, emoticons and shortened language

Feelings - yeah, it was quite hard, but I could understand it in the end

Conclusion - yeah, so that's what we did, yeah - how was your day?

The students practised these conversations in pairs and then did line-ups.

Anzac Avenue's Median Strip

One aspect of life that is different in Japan and New Zealand is traffic. In Japan, it is considered that cars will look out for pedestrians at all times (heavy penalties if pedestrians are hit, despite the fact that pedestrians may be in the wrong). Therefore, I have noticed that students walk along the median strip, sometimes quite oblivious to the fact that articulated trucks and speeding cars are rushing by them on both sides. Today, Nathan and I will teach some basic traffic conventions for pedestrians.

Television dinners

Television dinners

 

A lot of the students mentioned that it was difficult to have conversations with their homestay families because their families were always watching television. Some of the students even commented that a lot of the time they would have TV dinners, or that the television would be on during dinner time. The students said that they felt awkward if they disturbed their hosts while watching television and so decided not to say anything at all. Television acts as a socially-constructed medium for controlling when conversations should begin and end. Although the homestay families do converse during the commercial breaks, the conversation is usually reduced to short, quick comments rather than lengthy discussions. Again, this is a skill that the students do not have and so they find it difficult to communicate in these commercial breaks. In terms of an interpersonal function, by switching on the television during dinner time (or leaving the television switched on), the homestay parent has indirectly appropriated the mood and modality of any conversation that takes place. Similarly, the conversation of the student and parent watching a drama on television and only speaking during the commercial breaks indicated that the student acted in the same way as the parent in this situation. In both of these circumstances the parent not only controlled who the participants were, i.e., the television and the family members, but also when and how they were to participate. To use Itakura's (2001) term, the host parents construct a "sequential dominance" over the interaction. In other words, the rules of rapport were determined by the parent, who assumed the rules were known by the student. However, as we can see from the conversations that took place when the television was an active participant, the students decided to say very little, or not speak at all. It is also important to notice that none of the students initiated any conversation at these times. As Halliday (1984) notes, the students' communicative options have been severely restricted.

 

 

Showering in the homestay

Showering in the homestay

 

One common issue that was brought up by the students was that they had trouble understanding that their homestay only had a limited amount of water to use in the shower. This meant that most of the students could only shower for about five to ten minutes. In Japan, it is normally the practice for people to wash themselves using a shower and then soak in a very hot bath for up to half an hour. The water temperature in the bath can be controlled easily by a thermostat situated near the taps and is usually set to about forty three degrees Celsius (by most New Zealand people's standards this would be just too hot). Because of this very hot soaking, people would then be able to move around the home in very loose clothing before they get into bed or retire to a warmer part of the house. Because the students couldn't soak in a bath in their New Zealand homestay, they were always complaining of having a cold shower. When the host parents were questioned about this, they said that the water was hot, but that it always went cold because the students were staying in the shower until the water went cold. It was found that the students were in fact using the shower, not just as a means to wash themselves, but as a means to get warm by trying to soak in the shower instead of the bath because this was what they were used to in Japan. This was why the shower was going cold and was the reason why there were many complaints by the homestay parents saying that their student always used up all of the hot water.

It was also found that the students would be constantly turning the water on and off many times during showering. It is the custom in Japan to firstly quickly rinse oneself with warm to hot water using the shower and then turn the water off. Secondly, people soap up a washcloth and then wash themselves while the water is turned off. Thirdly, the shower (or small bucket filled with water) is turned on and is used to wash the soap off. The next step might be to turn the water off again and proceed to wash another part of the body, for example, hair or face. Again, the same procedure is used – the water is constantly turned off and on. The problem here is that in a typical New Zealand house where a hot water tank is used, it takes a bit of time for the water coming out of the taps to warm up. This is why the students often complain that the shower is cold when in fact, they haven't left the hot tap on long enough for it to become warm. (Turning the shower off and on and trying to adjust the temperature is particularly difficult to do if the homestay has one cold and one hot tap.) Similarly, the term "hot" has different connotations for different people. To maintain the temperature for a long period of time in a Dunedin homestay at about forty three degrees Celcius is difficult. The water would quickly be used up.