Have an opinion?

Welcome students and other visitors. Many university students have been hard at work to make the content for this blog, writing essays about a variety of subjects, from animals to war.

Please note that extensive teacher editing was not performed on the final drafts of these essays. These essays include grammatical and sentence level structural errors as well as spelling errors. Possible editing changes were suggested in most cases in earlier drafts, but the primary goal was to help students master writing structured essays in English, not the writing of error free essays.

I trust readers will appreciate the difficulties of having primarily first- year lower- level students write essays in English on more serious topics. I hope you will find the subjects interesting, and please free to comment on any essays you read or to drop me a line at kasmersensei@yahoo.com

Thank you for visiting,

Walter Kasmer

Lecturer at Hosei University, Aoyama Gakuin University, and Tokyo University of Science

Introduction of student essays by Dr. Mathew Varghese

I am really happy to bring out this issue of BilingualValue Bulletin. This year it contains 49 articles selected from the total of 108 essays received from you. Unfortunately due to various compelling reasons I couldn’t include all those nicely written essays. I  really apologize to those whose essays have not been included here. This year this Bulletin is different in several ways. One is the big difference in the number of submissions that has been received compared to the previous three years. In the first time when I decided to publish something like this I got only two essays from about 200 of my students. For the second volume I got 13 essays from about 210 students. And for the third volume it was 24 essays from 220 students. But this time the number has jumped up to 108. The second thing I like to mention here is your voluntarily submissions of the essays without any sorts of persuasion from my part. As usual this year also I have taught you a method of using English based on the English Bilingual project (EBP), a teaching methodology I have been

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumblingBible

 

developing for the last fifteen years. But especially for your classes this year I incorporated a new method of teaching phraseology that could enable you to use English as a bilingual language as the way you use Japanese.

 Nowadays English is used as a global language and people around the world use English to communicate in their own ways. I feel, in that sense, as a teacher I should teach you how to make phrases according to satisfy your communication requirements. This is widely different from the various other methodologies where English is taught as a foreign language using the native speakers’ constructed phrases. Your essays have proven that my method is functional in the Japanese situation. My aim was to train you in this method so that you could be able develop a technique to use English. Therefore my role was that of a trainer or a coach in a sports field: You don’t learn from me but you learn yourself with the help of this technique.

As you might know that I am a scholar working on the Philosophy of languages especially the interpretation and discourse theory known as Hermeneutics

In conversation, language becomes individualized, tailored to the situation of speaking. The selection of a word is determined by its meaning, but this meaning finds its weight by what is roused in the other person through the word  –Hans Georg Gadamar

. I am particularly specialized in Philosophical Hermeneutics, a method of interpretation using active discourses to understand a thought or concept. This method is used by language teachers especially the writing teachings around the world. However, in my classes I used this method to train you for developing phrases and sentences.   

 As I have always being telling in our classes that it is only human beings that can use languages and interpret the thoughts, and that can store it in the memory in the form of phrases and sentences. This ability is known as logos in Greek thought. When the writing scripts and methods were not innovated the ancient literature in India, Greece and other civilizations had been memorized by trained people. In India they were known as Banakas.

Until now, we don’t know anything about the animals’ ability to store information as the way humans do, but it is certain that there are a lot of intelligent animals who may be able to reflect and act like humans with varied capacities. You must understand that all Human knowledge is in the form of thought structures and communication between one another is done as interpretations of thought in an individualized way. No two human speeches are the same unless one attempts mimicking other’s speech. In our class I specially trained you to make your own speech.    

 I think it is one of the fundamental human rights to use speech in one’s own life. This includes the speech you develop by oral expressions and written expressions and also the speech you understand by reading others’ thought and hearing others’ speaking in any language. In all these activities you are engaging in an activity of interpretation of a discourse. The role of languages in human life is tremendous because the world beyond the expressions of languages is truly unknown to us.  In the process of making any language usable in one’s own way, one needs to learn its methods of making phrases and sentences.

 

The Methods followed in the Class for Generating Phrases

As a scholar in the Philosophy of languages, I am certain to say that the Indian contribution to syntax or the methods of making sentences is pioneering. In almost 3000 years ago an Indian linguist, Yaksha expressed the opinion that human languages have two possible ways of expressing thoughts: one is the past (murtha), and the other is the present (bhava). In fact most of the modern theories on tense and aspects are based on these two understandings. In my classes we have learned most of the expressions in English based on this theory. Another important contribution of Indians is in the field of semantics (word meanings); they have developed a unique method of constructing words (morphology) based on the use of root words. Using roots words is a method of all classical Indo-European languages like Greek and Latin, but in the Sanskrit morphology millions of words and expressions is being created from just 2000 or more root words. An individual language user is at liberty to create own words. Since English is a derived language from various Indo-European languages, we also have seen that such morphological properties influence English too; we also have discussed some of such morphological properties of English in our classes.

This year from the beginning I taught a method of making sentences (syntactical method) in your classes. I think that is the reason you could achieve certain level of communication skills. I consciously avoided making any reference to any of those theories because I was afraid that such learning of theories and concepts would divert your minds from the purpose of constructing meaningful sentences. When you may read this paper later, I want you to understand that all of our class activities were based on some theories of language, especially   while we were discussing, dialoging and writing to make sentences, or learning the procedures of making sentences.

Specifically, in the case of constructing phrases and then sentences, I used two methods from the generative theories of linguistics (Noam Chomsky School). The first one is using the head word in a phrase, and the verb as the head word in a sentence. The second is how the internal and external arguments in a sentence are formed with respect to the verb (the head word). You also taught repeatedly how the binary relation between words in a sentence is formed. The process of making phrases and sentences and the application of binary relations were the two aspect taught to you when you converse with me in our class discussions. You now know that the phrases and sentences can be formed in a variety of ways.

This year we have discussed a variety of topics, almost on 23 themes of contemporary importance. I always tried to choose a live theme on which you could think and construct sentences. The idea was to make you think in English as the way you think in Japanese on a particular topic in a particular situation.

I was trying to develop a broad Phraseology that is generative and live functioning when you are to construct a sentence. I am extremely honored and happy that you have accepted this method with such an encouraging response. You all have been very committed in participating in the class discussion and essentially writing your thoughts immediately in the class itself on the topic of discussion based on the opinions generated in the class. I think this method have enabled you to come out the problems of making sentences based on traditional grammatical rules, and also enabled you to improve your overall communication skills both in Japanese and in English. And many of you have understood now that after all English is just another human language in which we can think easily and construct thoughts into sentences.

Some Points to Remember

The most important thing that you may have to remember in future is that making mistakes is a natural event in language use.  It is like a child learning to walk. Especially I want to tell you one of the common problems you have is on the selection of the right word in English to construct your thoughts into meaningful sentences. You always have a habit of selecting the most difficult word from a Japanese-English dictionary. You may have to choose the word that gives you the complete meaning on what you want to say; and such words you have learn well because they would form your mental dictionary. As I always said in the class that you combine your thinking with the semantics (word meanings) and construct phrases. You may have to limit the dictionary use gradually and come out of its influence eventually.   You may also have to remember the difference in phrasing in Japanese and in English while you make sentences. Once you repeatedly practice the method taught in the class you could easily switch between English and Japanese.

I hope you will remember our class slogan, learn a language by learning to use it in communication, because language lives in speech. I also wish all of you a bright future with good and clear thoughts.

Mathew Varghese

Preface by Walter Kasmer

Dear readers,

My Aoyama Gakuin University colleague Dr. Mathew Varghese has worked with students to produce this bullentin.  We hope that the opinions offered here by Japanese university students will interest readers and in turn motivate them to think about some of the themes offered. Our hope is to add additional essays, hopefully produced under the same guidelines as Matthew has used for the essays reprinted here from Bilingual Value Bulletin Vol. 3 January 2010 Issue 1.

Sincerely,

Walter Kasmer

Lecturer for Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo University of Science, and Hosei University

Keisuke Honda

I introduce Keisuke Honda. He is a proffetional soccer player and Japanese

representative. He is a left-handed player. He belongs to VVVVenlo now.

By the way, Iintroduce his good points from now on.

First,his age is very young. So his future is expected by many people.

Secondly, his soccer style is very aggressive. He shoot positively . So

he can makemany goal’s chances. It is good for team.

Finally, he has various shoot. Especially, he is good at no spin shoot.

So he can take the point by the free kick. It is terrible.

In other words , first, his age is very young. Secondly,  he can take many goals.

Finally, he has various shoot. He is a very wonderful soccer player at these points.

Because he was not able to achieve the aim of own in the World Cup of

this year, he willbe going to improve technique in strong club team for

the next World Cup.

His growth and the expectation for him are increasing recently. For

example, Liverpoolwith strength of TOP4 in England starts acquiring him,

and everyone is expecting him to work as an ace in the Japanese

representative.

I am expecting his growth and activity in the future.!!!!

Ryotaro Hachiya

My favorite player Yu Darvish

I like baseball. Especially, I like pitcher.  I think Yu
Darvish is number one baseball pitcer.  The almost everyone says that
Matsuzaka is the best pitcher.  However, Matsuzaka is a little fat.
Therefore, I like Yu Darvish more.

Yu  Darvish started playing baseball from the second grader
in the elementary school.  At that time, his baseball team came in the third
place in the world.  He was terrible from that time.  And, he entered the
Tohoku high school.

He was an ace pitcher from the autumn of one year.  And, he
participated in Koshien in the summer of two years.  However, the result was
a second place.  He tossed a no-hitter in the spring of three years.  And,
he received the summer of the fate for three years.

His high school had been enumerated in the favorite.  He won
well and went up to the expectation with second round by the first answer
round.  The high school of the other party of third round was a high school
of the debut.  It has rained during the game.  The other party becomes
superior by the rain, and Darvish was defeated.

Darvish is a wonderful player now.  However, he still regrets not
to win the championship in Koshien. And, it keeps making an effort the
chagrin in provisions and it making an effort to him.

Tsubasa Nishimata

AKB48

AKB48 is an idol group that represents Japan. This group that was born in Akihabara in 2005 has grown up because the fan and it is closely related. And they acquire the top of Oricon CD Ranking by four continuous CDs. Recently, the fan balloting that is called “Selection general election” is executed, and a large-scale handshake event has been held on all over the Japan. However, it goes separately on several days for a lot of fans to visit. Moreover, this group is making the derivation unit because there are quite a lot of numbers of people. For example, “no3b”, “Watarirouka Hashiritai”,  “French kiss” and so on. Those groups also have acquired the high rank in Oricon.

It is wonderful that gives birth to a large economic effect in this group. The achievement of the company that appointed this group by CM has expanded, and total sales of CD put out this year exceed two million.

Moreover, live done in a large-scale hall is made to succeed and this group performs in the theater in Akihabara every day. The member who is frequently performing to media also is participating in the theater in Akihabara. And this performance has been continued at first of the birth.

Every member of AKB48 firmly has its dream. I want you to work hard with there dream keep.

Kentaro Suzuki

A Japanese activist in Uganda

Now we eat a lot of food and have a peaceful life and sleep in clean bed. In developed country almost all of the people leave food unfinished and throw it away. However, the children in some country don’t have food and even the place that sleeps safely. They sleep being frightened in the roadside. Occasionally there are children kidnapped while they are sleeping too. Why there are such inequalities in the world? What should we do for suffering people? In order to save them, I think, it become at least first step to know the present condition and the people who help suffering people. Now I’ll show you about the condition of Uganda and my important meeting and M’s Sakuragi’s activities.

 The condition of Uganda has been tragic. Uganda had been ruled by Britain. In 1962, Uganda became independent from Britain, but in 1966 the coup d’état occurred and after that it occurred many times. So public peace had more and more worsen. Awful poverty happened. Many fight occurred, and rebel army came into existence. Rebel army kidnapped and the children are made a soldier. Moreover many villages were attacked. To make matters worse, it was attacked by the children who were kidnapped before. The people were always frightened.

 When I was examinee of Universe, I met Ms.Sakuragi in exhibition of her. Her speech changed my idea to charity in poverty country. She speak to us that charity is fun and she is so happy now. In about 2000, Ms.sakuragi graduated from University, and after a while started active in Uganda. She isn’t originally interested in charity absolutely. She was concern with Uganda firstly, when she travel to Uganda to picture in university student. After she returned to Japan, she found employment, but after a while she was still apprehensive about Uganda. Finally she retired her job, and started charity in Uganda.

 Ms.Sakuragi’s activity is mainly three parts. For one thing, it is the Nest. Second is the Night Commuter. The last is photograph activity and exhibition. The Nest is abbreviation of Needy Education Scholar Trust. This project is a kind of scholarship. In Uganda, there many children who are intelligence and have big dreams but don’t have money enough to go to school. Or there are even children who have never think about dreams of themselves.  For them, she began this project, but it differs from normal scholarship. Her group gives two hircine and two chickens besides scholarship. This means their family can become independent. She wishes that children are able to select their dream. Night Commuter is accommodations of children who take shelter in the fear of kidnapping of guerrilla. She plays with children, for example draw pictures or do campfire. They look forward to coming here now though they were frightened at first.  Thirdly, she also takes pictures, and held the exhibition in the photograph for everyone to learn about the Africa. However her pictures are not tragic but happy life of Africa.

 I was surprised at the pictures, because I have a stereotype to Africa and Charity. I learnt for the first time that at poverty country in Africa though life is hard, people lead a happy life, and Charity is such an interesting activity.  To help poverty people, it’s important that we know present world condition and many People who help them and act even a small thing. Ms.Sakuragi said to us in Exhibition that there were a lot of smiles though there was a war there, too.

Wataru Machida

Cloning

At first, why I want to write about clone is that clone is attracted great attention

even as for the aspect that is bad at the good. That’s why , I want to study about it.

Clone is a group which has same nucleic-acid & cell & indivisual

and it’s original mean is a silp. Clone technology is used by two ways of methods.

One is for plant. Plants for old clone technologies such as cutting in agriculture, horticulture is used. Clone body cells to material Mericlone cultivation as practical.

Another is for animal. The world’s first cloned animal was made by no fertilization  in 1952. In mammals in 1981, Willadsen sheep in similar way from fertilized egg clone individual makes, Willadsen 1986, further fabricated a clone by nuclear transplantation from sheep early embryos.

Now, human clone attracts arguments widely, because  human clone has a lot of problem. One of them is ethical problem & technical problem. Clone life is short. There is an age gap between clone and human who is used as clone. If I make own clone, the clone is a baby then. Vein & fingerprint are not the same, because they are acquired.

The other is about the direction for uses. It is useful to transplant organ. Using stem cells from the somatic cell transplant who own, and copy them. And,  regeneration medical treatment is studied recently.

I write about clone regulation. There are two regulations. One is humanity problem. Everyone have a look totally together people and social system will be on serious. In addition There are many humanitarian problems.

Another is fear of slavery. Making many men caused to overwork their bodies and lobors.

As above clone technology has many problem. But the technology is epoch-making very fantastically.

So we hope that this technology deletes a bad aspect ,and do effective practical

use In the future.

New essays

I have added 77 essays from the last term in 2010 and hope that you can enjoy them. I do hope to get some additional ones, as some students failed to give me an email last term as was asked.

The range of topics has also been expanded. I will note that I asked my students to do more research on their essays though they were given less time (only 1 term) rather than a whole year of writing practice as my colleague Dr. Varghese allowed. Hopefully the shorter time span spent on writing hasn’t affected the quality of the essays too much and our readers will enjoy them.

Sincerely,

Walter Kasmer

Lecturer-at-large

Tea ceremony

The tea ceremony is a traditional culture of Japan.

The tea ceremony started about 1000 years ago, and become present shape 500 years ago.

There are various rules in the tea ceremony,and rules has a long history.

Hereafter, I will introduce the history, rules and style of the tea ceremony.

The tea ceremony has spread from Kamakura Period, it is Edo period becoming a present form.

And, the tea ceremony spread to a general person at the Meiji era, and everyone came to be able to learn readily.

As a result, the tea ceremony established it as a culture of Japan, rule is very difficult.

Because there is an idea of Wabi and Sabi.

There are basic rules because it doesn’t give the other party the unpleasantness.

Even how with the container and the walking of the tatami mat are decided.

The style of the tea ceremony was the one for the aristocrat, however, it changed in the age.

There is a style of the tea ceremony to study the Japanese culture now.

The style of the tea ceremony started educating as a liberal arts subject.

In summary, the tea ceremony that started for about 1000 years has changed into the one that even a general person can learn at the Meiji era.  As a result, the tea ceremony established it as a culture of Japan.  Next, the rule of the tea ceremony is very difficult, that has not changed for a long time. The most important idea is wabi and sabi.  Finally, it is different now though the style of the tea ceremony was the one for the aristocrat.  There is a style of the tea ceremony to learn the Japanese culture now.  The tea ceremony has a long history, and is very difficult. However, learning the tea ceremony now will learn the Japanese culture, because the tea ceremony is one of the very good Japanese cultures.

Manato Iki

World Cup

The World Cup can make people excited and amused . First of all, I explain soccer  legend .There are three soccer legends. Secondly, I explain the Japan-South Korea World Cup in 2002. Thirdly，I explain the South African World Cup. The World Cup is a dream rally for the soccer player. The World Cup is held only once every four years. Therefore, people all over the world get excited.

First of all, I explain soccer legend .The first is Pele. His nickname is God. He is very famous. He got 1281 goals throughout a soccer life. Pele was chosen first among 100 great footballers of the 20th century. The second is Diego Armando Maradona. His nickname is son of God. He is a no.1 soccer player, because he got a goal by hand in World Cup. Moreover, he did five people by a dribble. But he used a drug, so he was not able to participate in the last World Cup. This was his greatest mistake., however he supervises Argentina now. The third is Zico . He was called white Pele. Zico was a Japanese supervisor of the German World Cup in 2006 .

Secondly, I explain the Japan-South Korea World Cup in 2002. The two countries were chosen as hosts by FIFA in May 1996 and was the first tournament in its history to be hosted by two countries. The 2002 FIFA World Cup was also the first World Cup held in Asia. The Japan-South Korea World Cup was held when I was t sixth grader in the elementary school. Therefore, I wanted to be a soccer player.

Moreover, J League was not popular at that time. But the number of spectators of J League has increased thanks to the Japan-South Korea World Cup. Therefore, the Japan-South Korea World Cup gave a considerable economic effect for Japan. The World Cup brings various economic effects.

Lastly, I explain the South African World Cup. The South African World Cup will be the first time that the tournament has been hosted by an African nation. I worry about the World Cup held in Africa, because public safety is very bad. The soccer player was killed, however this World Cup brings a good economic effect. I think that the public peace will improve even a little. The World Cup makes the country abundant and purveys dreams to people.

In summary, there are three soccer legends . Pele, Maradona and Zico are very fantastic soccer player . Japan-South Korea World Cup in 2002 was the first tournament in its history to be hosted by two counties. The South African World Cup will be the first time that the tournament has been hosted by an African nation. So, This World Cup makes the country abundant and purveys dreams to people.

Sugeno Fujinori

About afternoon tea

These days many people around the world enjoy afternoon tea. However it was a custom only in Britain before. I will talk about popularization of afternoon tea, the kinds of it, and dress code of it.

First of all, I’ll talk about popularization of afternoon tea. It is said that Anna Maria started afternoon tea in middle of nineteen century. At that time, the upper classes usually ate a lot brunch, light lunch, and dinner after about eight. So they were hungry at about four. Someday, Anna Maria treated guests to cake with tea. This treat was so popular with the guests. This is said the origin of afternoon tea. After that, this custom of eating something before dinner was spread between the upper classes. Moreover high rank hotels started afternoon tea services in 1880s. This is because afternoon tea spread wider.

Secondly I’ll talk about the kinds. Afternoon tea is divided into some types by kinds of cake and drink. I will introduce four kinds of well-known it. In Full Tea, people eat sandwiches and scones and small fruit tarts. In Royal Tea, they enjoy Full Tea with champagne. Light Tea is informal Full Tea. People usually eat only scones and small cake. Finally High Tea is like dinner, people enjoy Full Tea with chicken, meat pie, salad, cheese, biscuit, and fruit.

Finally let’s look at dress code. Today women don’t need to wear cocktail dress, hat, glove, and etc. But they usually dress up still. In the case of men, wearing the jacket and the necktie is natural.

In conclusion, afternoon tea spread wider by the upper classes and is divided into about four types and has dress code. And many people enjoy afternoon tea for a long time. Afternoon tea is not only tea time but also talking time. People might enjoy talking rather than eating. Today, afternoon tea is not formal. But it doesn’t change on the point of enjoyable. In the future, this custom will be continued.

Kana Oowatari