Got My Soccer Referee License

My son's soccer team needed to get more referees to register for an upcoming tournament, so I enrolled in a one-day workshop to get a Level 4 Referee License from the Japan Football Association.　（JFA Website）

Basically, this entails sitting through 7 hours of boring lectures as an enthusiastic but uninspiring senior referee reads through the Japanese version of The Laws of the Game.

At the end of the day, we had a 25 item true or false written test that everyone passed. The questions were tough and I probably wouldn't have passed it if I hadn't gotten the lecture. The lecturer helped us along by letting us know what would be on the test and what wouldn't.



So...at the end of the day, after sitting and listening (except for some mysterious stretching and janken reflex games suddenly thrown in after lunch), and taking the test and paying my 7000yen (which the team will pay for), I was certified to referee all types of local league amateur games--without ever actually doing any practice of refereeing!! Somehow the concept of "doing" something to learn it has not arrived at JFA yet.

The guy kept on taking about a "skills practice" section of the lecture, but apparently this was the section were he showed us how to raise flags, issue cards etc. We hardly ever got off our chairs.

I almost went up to talk to the lecturer guy about how he needs to improve his sessions, but he didn't seem interested in feedback, so I backed off.

I would strongly, strongly recommend the JFA cut the time for this lecture down from 7 hours to...1~2 hours and provide a hands on skill workshop. The whole thing shouldn't take more than 3 hours. In fact, the whole thing should not be in a lecture hall to begin with. It should be done on a field with real lines, with the participants taking turns flagging off-sides, calling fouls, etc. to get experience controlling the game. Maybe I should email them?

RW/WW Offline Conference, ICU Sept. 19, 2010

I'm part of a group of researchers and teachers exploring how the "Workshop" method of teaching writing and reading can be leveraged in Japan for better language teaching.

The 19th was our third "offline" meeting, giving us a chance to develop new projects that we have been studying and planning for over our online mailing list for the past few years.

One event coming up in November is our interactive 60 minute session at JALT 2010, which will give participants to experience the concept of the Writing Workshop Method, see examples of how it has helped Japanese EFL learners at various levels (junior high to college), and ask questions about it.

After we shared recent teaching practice and planned our JALT workshop, we had a chance to go out for drinks for the first time, finally after studying together for almost three years. The group has some of the most dedicated teachers and researchers I know, and the discussions about fundamental problems with education systems in Japan were very stimulating. We have a lot of work to do to help educators at all levels recognize that education is about learning not teaching.

Yoshida-san, the initiator of the group, has published a number of books that have helped me to reexamine how learning takes place, and how classrooms can be transformed into active communities of learners rather than passive audiences for the teacher.

ASIA TEFL Conference, Hanoi, Vietnam 2010

I haven't had a chance to move my Hanoi photos from my laptop to my desktop yet, so here are some stock photos from the Internet.

This 2010 August Asia TEFL conference got sandwiched in between a trip to the US and obligations back in Japan, so we were in Hanoi for...two nights? It was really in and out. We arrived, slept, presented, met some new and old friends at the conference briefly, crashed from jet lag and exhaustion, and barely got in a few bites of absolutely excellent Vietnamese food and a few cups of aromatic, creamy Vietnamese coffee before boarding a plane back to Narita.

My research partner and Kota presented our paper "Development of Learner Self-Confidence: The Case of a Japanese EAP Program" to a good size group and had some good exchange of ideas with participants from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and even Uzbekistan.

Next time I need to stay in Hanoi at least a week. I didn't get to tour the bay or the terraced rice fields in the mountains, and the city itself had plenty to do. It felt safe and the people were very friendly. As the motobike scene below shows, the streets of Hanoi look a lot like China. Having lived in Shandong for two years, I felt right at home crossing streets with thousands of mopeds with no stoplights. But everyone is very careful and organically adjusting to traffic even without lanes or lights. Amazing.

JACET 2010 in Sendai

September has been going by so fast that I haven't had time to write up much at all.

JACET 2010 at Miyagi U. in Sendai was a lot of fun:

1. Presented! in Japanese for the first time, my classroom activity report on 「Critical Academic Discussions (CADs): 批判的思考とスピーキング力を伸ばす学生主導タスクの試み」 ("CADs: A student-centered task for developing critical thinking and speaking skills"). This is about the new type of speaking task I tried in the Advanced Academic Speaking class at ICU. Basically, it is a 15 minute mix of argumentative, presentation, debate, and discussion and enhances traditional "present and discuss" activities by building in an element of "critical questions" like debate. My ICU students liked the flow of activity a lot, so I decided to share it with other college teachers in Japan. I showed some video clips and explained how it flows, and what students liked and disliked about it. This academic year, I plan to try it again and gather more data on how students improve their confidence and ability to interact with critical question and answer to dissect arguments and suggest in a constructive, polite and friendly way. The paper is forthcoming...

2. Steered--Did my duty as a member of the Convention Steering Committee for JACET 2010, mainly contributing to the creation of the convention program and other documents like the call for papers along the way. It is nice to be involved in an academic organization committee, working together with people from different universities and exchange ideas with them. The only problem is that this type of volunteer work can tend to snowball...and I hope I can keep the amount of work reasonable by drawing in new recruits to share the work with me. Anyone interested?

3. Picked up some new ideas--My colleague Masuko did a very nice symposium presentation on how her students did critical analysis and reflection on language learning materials, and developed their autonomy as language learners (and future teachers) in the process. I also learned a lot from a workshop by Dr. Asakawa et al on integrating global studies and social activism into language classes. The plenary by Dr. Simon Borg on teacher autonomy was a nice overview of how to examine our own beliefs as teachers, but I personally wished that it had been a workshop style. Met some old and new friends at various parties along the way and am looking forward to seeing them again in Fukuoka September 2011.

4. Enjoyed the city of Sendai--If you are looking for out-of-this-earth beef tongue barbecue, Rikyu is a solid choice for lunch or dinner with stores conveniently located here and there around downtown Sendai. We were already satisfied with Rikyu's "芯たん" which is amazing, but decided to explore the ultimate beef tongue. The true champion, according to rankings on word-of-mouth site TabeLog, and confirmed by my own amateur tasting, was a hideout known as Tsuruno. The flavor defies words. The seafood such as oysters were good too, but the beef tongue, as tataki and as yaki was amazing.


I'll be looking forward to going back to Sendai.

Discussion Notes: Barna 7-14

Main Points:

This section has three more stumbling blocks:

Stereotypes and preconceptions such as "all Japanese are inscrutable" or "all Americans are individualistic and outgoing" are a stumbling block because they make it difficult for us to see a person or situation in that culture objectively.

The tendency to evaluate other cultures as "strange" or "abnormal" is also a main stumbling block because it leads to unnecessary conflicts. It is necessary for us to stay open-minded and "look and listen empathically" without judging.

High anxiety or tension, which is often experienced in intercultural communication, is also a stumbling block because stress leads to defense mechanisms such as "skewing of perceptions, withdrawal, or hostility." In other words, when we feel stressed, it is more difficult to stay calm and enjoy cultural differences. As solutions, Barna recommends getting used to differences and to increasing awareness and control of one's physical responses to stress.

Finally, Barna's conclusion recommends an achievement of intercultural communication competence, which is the ability to manage the challenges of intercultural communication such as differences and stress.

My Critical Reactions

1. Overall, I think Barna's "6 stumbling blocks" are useful to be aware of, but why does she stop at six? Aren't there others? For example, why doesn't she include important things such as "apathy toward other cultures" as a stumbling block?
   
   
2. In the Culture Shock section, I think Barna fails to write adequate solutions. She writes that culture shock is "least troublesome to those who learn to accept cultural diversity with interest (p.12)", but what should people who get culture shock DO to overcome it??
   
   
3. In the Stereotype section, Barna states that "stereotypes are psychologically necessary" because they help us avoid ambiguity or a sense of helplessness and give us security. However, I don't agree that we need "overgeneralized, secondhand beliefs" such as "All Japanese are~~" or "All Americans are~~". Some reasonable generalizations such as "Many Japanese tend to be more reserved than Americans" may be useful, but OVERgeneralizations should be avoided completely. They are not useful; they are harmful.

Discussion Questions:

1. Which of the 6 stumbling blocks do you think is the most serious? In other words, which one is the most useful for all intercultural communicators to know? Why?
   
2. If you were to choose a "7th" stumbling block, what would it be?
3. Do you have any stereotypes of people from other cultures? Where did your stereotype come from?
4. Have you ever experienced culture shock overseas or within Japan? What physical or mental reactions do you remember?
   

Discussion Notes Barna 1-7

Summary:
Barna, a professor of intercultural communication, presents six main stumbling blocks in intercultural communication, which is becoming more important as globalization advances:

The first three are:

1. Assumption of Similarities, which basically means that a person from one culture naively assumes that a person from a different culture will have similar beliefs or customs. This type of assumption causes problems because in reality various cultures have differences. (Definition key sentence=p.1, L14-17)

The solutions she suggests are basically to be ready for and sensitive to differences, to understand your own culture and beliefs, and to try to understand another culture deeply from history or literature, not superficially only with second-hand information from guidebooks.

2. Language differences basically means vocabulary, syntax, idioms, slang, dialects differences between languages. In addition to that, Barna says the tenacity which means a person will cling to just one meaning of a word or phrase in the new language regardless of connotation or context is a greater problem. Barna also says there are other problems of language including the different styles of using language. They are such as direct, indirect; expansive, succinct; argumentative, conciliatory; instrumental, harmonizing; and so on.

3. According to Barna, non-verbal misinterpretations occur because different cultures have different nonverbal communication styles in terms of gestures, facial expressions, and other patterns and people cannot understand nonverbal messages they are not familiar with.


3 Critical Reactions:

1. On p.2, Barna says "There seem to be no universals of human nature" to be a basis of automatic mutual understanding, but I wonder whether this is true or not.

2. On p.2, Barna basically says Japanese believe they are distinct from the rest of world and this leads to exclusionary attitudes and passive efforts toward mutual understanding. I wonder what evidence she bases this on.

3. On p.6, Barna quotes Mead's idea that it is important to sensitize people to intercultural variables instead of developing stereotypes. This sounds like a good idea, but how exactly can this be done?

2 Discussion Questions:

1. Have you ever felt frustration with intercultural communication, in Japan or outside Japan?
What happened and why was it so frustrating? Was it A of S? or LD? or NM?

2. Are Japanese people "distinct" from the other cultural group's of the world? What aspects of Japanese culture are "unique"?

ARW Autumn 9/13-14: Intro to Culture, Perception, Communication Unit

After reviewing names, we talked about how we can simply define the terms Culture, Perception, Communication (as a "personal" working definition), why they are important to us, and what issues or problems in relation to them we might consider for essays and discussions.

Here's our definitions.

For issues/problems, for example, we brainstormed (mainly in BB) that some key issues are Intercultural Misunderstandings, War and Conflict between peoples, Discrimination, Extreme Beliefs (based on misperceptions), and Lack of Communication.

As for good key words, for essays, I encouraged students to find articles in the news (like this one about Aso's "One Race" speech) that show some of the main culture/perception/communication related issues.

Two examples of past students essays I showed were about "Causes of Discrimination Against Ainu" and "Is the Veil in Islam Discrimination Against Women?". Both of these were very nicely written based on the students' interest in cultural understanding issues they found on the Internet or other media.


I hope all students have good luck with finding a topic they are interested in! Here are the Essay Guidelines.

Finally, we reviewed how to read a text and prepare notes for discussion.

I introduced the idea of "Top-Down" reading (see graphic) briefly, and then introduced 5 steps I hope all students will do for our reading text (Barna's Stumbling Blocks in Intercultural Communication pp.1-7). See you on Wed!


Source/More Info:

ARW Autumn 9/10 - First Class!

I could not attend the official "first class" on Wed due to my presentation and duties at JACET 2010 in Sendai, so this was the first day to meet my new sections of students, BB and BH.

They helped me learn their names by lining up in ABC order, and then I introduced our course and asked them to do P&Ds (presentation and discussions) on their summer reading books.

I'm very happy that both sections have a friendly, diligent atmosphere and am looking forward to our 10 weeks of learning together. The discussions on their summer reading looked quite lively, and I'm looking forward to reading their reaction journals and Book Reactions on our Moodle site.

Using the "recommended ELP summer list" as the basis of their choice, several read The Giver by Lowry, and Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby were popular as well. Some others read Girl with the Pearl Earring, Things Fall Apart, 1984, Brave New World, Siddartha, and The Pearl. Some unique choices were The Picture of Dorian Grey, Slaughterhouse Five, Cartels of the Mind, and Razor's Edge.

Below are some quick "First day of school" cartoons off the Internet.

Fatherhood in Japan

I feel this is a very important issue for Japanese society and culture, and I was happy to see that it was the focus of a Japan Times editorial and to find that the Welfare Ministry of Japan has a project to promote the importance of fatherhood.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/ed20100905a1.html

ICU students, this may be a good essay topic if you examine whether the government's plan will work or not for improving a sense of responsibility among fathers who are having difficulty making time for their families!

http://www.ikumen-project.jp/index.html

I declare myself an iku-man!