JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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Betzee
If there's a moderate in office we must do what we can to bolster him. Khatami's government organized Iran's vigil of support for the victims of 9/11. As Shias, the Iranians themselves have historically been targets of Sunni fundamentalists.
Once Iran was included in the "axis of evil," it undercut his ability to argue "we can deal with the US in a non-confrontational way" to the hardliners in his own government. What a surprise, he was succeeded by Ahmadinejad.
Posted in: Khatami to run again for Iran presidency
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Betzee
They must have made it clear the shark will eat what it's served.
Not even on its birthday, if it hasn't eaten any fish in front of patrons all year?
I live not too far from a beach which has become home to a colony of elephant seals. It's heartbreaking when the pups get separated from their mothers, usually during storms, because they starve to death. After being weaned they have to teach themselves to swim at which point they become vulnerable to sharks, but at least nobody sees it!
Posted in: Tiger shark
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Betzee
Sea turtles are quite large, they can weigh as much as 100 pounds. They are beautiful to watch as they glide through the water using long flippers which is probably what attracts sharks, who are as sensitive to motion as snakes.
It certainly wouldn't be pleasant to watch a tiger shark do in a sea turtle, and hence the aquarium ensures it takes place after hours.
Posted in: Tiger shark
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Betzee
For most people, it takes a considerable investment of their time to master another language. You have to cut yourself off from other activities and friends to study. If there's no discernible pay-off, many will not be so inclined.
In my travels I've meant no shortage of long-term expats, many of whom are English teachers, who've developed strong listening proficiency and are able to speak enough to get through daily life transactions. But you tell 'em, "Get off at this bus stop" and they can't because they never learned to read. Why? Could get by without it.
Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?
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Betzee
I meant a native speaker of Japanese!
Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?
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Betzee
Sarge, maybe Cleo can apply her teaching expertise to you in ordering those chocolate milkshakes you mentioned you were addicted to so you pass yourself off as a native speaker!
Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?
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Betzee
A more serious problem may be that standards in Japanese are slipping. Most kids (everywhere) spend far more time playing video games than reading, for example.
I don't think the USA, where too many students find French grammar terribly challenging, is unique in this regard. Bottom line: if you lack a solid command of your mother tongue, you are not going to acquire one in a foreign language.
Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?
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Betzee
To learn any foreign language well, motivation must extend beyond just passing a test or getting a better job. English is the international lingua franca and that alone creates incentives to learn it, at least to exhibit some minimal mastery when the circumstances require it.
That alone, however, provides no insight into a different culture's way of looking at the world which is often one of the motivations for those who learn the language well. It's one thing to get your point across; it's another to be able to do so idiomatically.
Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?
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Betzee
Of course. Some aquariums don't mix them because patrons don't want to watch sharks devour other fish, particularly if there's a struggle. But it's also possible this one was fed in advance.
Posted in: Tiger shark
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Betzee
Taiwan has largely replicated the Japanese approach to learning English from an instructor with extremely limited speaking capability who presents students with the different tenses but can't offer examples of when one might use them. Needless to say, it's a very tedious approach. After two years there, I came to the (erroneous) conclusion native Chinese speakers can't learn to converse proficiently in English.
In fact it was the teaching methods that were the problem. I know this because later I met many mainland Chinese who had achieved a high degree of proficiency despite never setting foot outside their homeland. Most had supplemented classroom learning with a combination of listening to radio programs, VOA or the the BCC, along with reading whatever they could get their hands on.
There's no control group to test different hypotheses for poor English proficiency among native Japanese speakers.
Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?
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Betzee
I learned Chinese this way in Taiwan, where they've developed a simple phonetic alphabet to enable children to read texts before they've mastered many characters. You sometimes see people, particularly kids, reading the symbols rather than the characters.
This won't help much with poor pronunciation, though, which reflects problems approximating sounds that may be endemic to native speakers of one language trying to learn another.
Posted in: What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan?
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Betzee
This is an example of how we really shoot ourselves in the foot:
Prior to Khatami's visit to Harvard (in 2005?):
The Kennedy School of Government said today it had secured protection for former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami when he visits Harvard on Sunday, one day after Massachusetts Governor W. Mitt Romney ordered all state agencies to refuse requests to provide security for the Muslim cleric.
On Tuesday, Romney, who earned joint degrees in business and law from Harvard in 1974, called Harvard’s invitation of the former Iranian leader “a disgrace to the memory of all Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of extremists.”
The Kennedy School pledged on Tuesday that the event would go forward as planned, despite Romney’s announcement.
“We can understand and often share [Romney’s] disagreement with the positions of Khatami,” the school said in a statement. “The school nonetheless believes that active and open dialogue are a critical part of effective education and policy.”
Khatami is not an extremist. But that seems to elude the "we don't negotiate with evil we defeat it" crowd. Ahmadinejad is the first non-cleric to be president of Iran.
Posted in: Khatami to run again for Iran presidency
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Betzee
Yabits,
Iran is an interesting place for an election watcher. While candidates must be approved and the mullahs do retain real power, once an election kicks off the candidates conduct their campaigns in rather sophisticated fashion. Persian is the third largest internet language after English and Mandarin. You're not anyone in Iran unless you have a blog and this creates an environment conducive to the exchange of ideas rather than simply chanting slogans. This is not Saudi Arabia....
Posted in: Khatami to run again for Iran presidency
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Betzee
So beautiful (to gaze at through glass!)
Posted in: Tiger shark
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Betzee
If he wins, the Obama administration has to engage him. Khatami's first victory was a miscalculation on the part of the mullahs when they let him stand for office in the first place. We didn't take advantage of it and he was replaced by Ahmadinejad. (Iran has its own red state-blue state electoral configuration).
I realize Iran consumed the Carter presidency and nearly did in Ronald Reagan through the now forgotten Iran-contra scandal, but the zero enrichment policy of GWB was an adject failure.
Posted in: Khatami to run again for Iran presidency
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Betzee
Obama forcefully articulated the perception that there's “two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks.” This was undercut by nominating a succession of people who hadn't paid their taxes. (While Joe the Plumber's tax delinquency made a mockery of his claims he was going to buy a business, it was taken as a sad reflection on the ability of the semi-skilled to keep their heads above water in a post-industrial economy rather than evidence of double standards).
Members of Congress are insulated from the concerns of everyday Americans. John McCain's health care reform plan was laughable; but what could be expected from a man whose job provides the best health care options America has to offer and who couldn't tell you offhand how many homes he owns? He tried to compensate by picking a running mate who was from "real America," but her efforts to portray herself as a "regular hockey Mom" were undercut by revelations of Imelda Marcos style shopping sprees with someone else's credit card.
Institutionalized bribery of public officials, along with the revolving door between government and businesses lobbying for government contracts, may account for much of this obvious hypocrisy. But efforts to implement campaign finance reform went nowhere....
Posted in: Obama, Senate Republicans bicker over economic stimulus bill
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Betzee
What I most resent about the GWB is the wasted years. We desperately needed to rethink America's place in a changing world. Instead we were told to "go shopping." So did Uncle Sam, does anyone even have an idea of what that five trillion was spent on?
We'd already lost most manufacturing jobs to China, among other countries. Over the past eight years technology allowed service jobs to be outsourced to places like India. In some cases those who sent jobs overseas defended themselves on the grounds that it relieved them of footing the bill for an employer-paid health care system.
By not addressing these issues, we've ended up in a situation where growing numbers of laid-off Americans will be forced to seek help from underfunded state-government funded social services.
Posted in: Obama, Senate Republicans bicker over economic stimulus bill
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Betzee
I just went through the process of applying for a mortgage. It was a very thorough vetting process to determine what I could afford. Now that the housing market is depressed, I can get a nice home and afford to keep up with the payments.
If only everyone had had to go through this we wouldn't have ended up where we are now. Too many people were lured into home ownership by ever-escalating real estate prices, the mentality became "you can't afford not to buy." It's going to be a painful lesson.
Posted in: Obama, Senate Republicans bicker over economic stimulus bill
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Betzee
They are more afraid that the economic stimulus package might actually work, and the Democrats getting the credit, than of it loading on more debt to that which the administration of the past 8 year has accrued.
Yabits,
I completely agree. This past year free-market ideology has been discredited and the Republican Party doesn't have anything to fall back on. This was underscored in Frank Rich's column last week:
The House minority leader, John Boehner, from the economic wasteland of Ohio, declared on ''Meet the Press'' last Sunday that the G.O.P. didn't want to be ''the party of 'No' '' but ''the party of better ideas, better solutions.'' And what are those ideas, exactly? He said he'll get back to us ''over the coming months.''
His deputy, the Virginia congressman Eric Cantor, has followed the same script, claiming that the G.O.P. will not be ''the party of 'No' '' but will someday offer unspecified ''solutions and alternatives.'' Not to be left out, the party's great white hope, Sarah Palin, unveiled a new political action committee last week with a Web site also promising ''fresh ideas.'' But as the liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga observed, the site invites visitors to make donations and read Palin hagiography while offering no links to any ideas, fresh or otherwise.
Posted in: Obama, Senate Republicans bicker over economic stimulus bill
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Betzee
In good times governments are supposed to run surpluses. Yet during the good times under GWB Uncle Sam continually came up short, which should have told us somethin' was amiss.
What created prosperity during the GWB years was dependence on debt. This is what caused the private sector to retrench late in the game, without credit nobody's buying much. It's going to take the private sector a good long while to recover. Meanwhile, people have bills to pay and may need to see a doctor....
Posted in: Obama, Senate Republicans bicker over economic stimulus bill