Friday September 28th

Discuss favorite quotes

Job interview practice - Choose a field you would like to be in. Think of 10 questions and interviewer might ask you if you applied for such a job. Give your questions to someone else, and role play interviews.

Commentary practice and sample recording.
Think of a commentary topic that you could speak on for about 6 minutes. Take some notes about what you want to say. Discuss in a group.

Sign up for a speaking booth. Use audacity, a voice recording software. Record your commentary. Don't worry about mistakes as you speak. People make mistakes when they speak, even in their native language. Try to express as much information as possible, as clearly as possible. Make sure that when you save you go to export, and then export as wav. Send the (clearly labeled) wav file to me.

Yaskuni Commentary responses

Please post them here!

Today's Schedule (Sept 25, 2007)

Part I

Warm up

Find a quote from one of these, or similar website: http://thinkexist.com/quotes/top/nationality/english/
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/english.html

You can search for nice quotes by topic, author, etc. Please practice your chosen quote, record it using sound recorder, and send it to me.

Part II

Get into groups of 3. Choose one of the videos below, and listen to /watch it. Try to transcribe two minutes of it. Writing down ever word that you hear, and the person who said it. For example:

John:
Yoko:
Dick:
John:
John:


Then write a 5 sentence response to what you watched. What did you think of it? How difficult was it to understand? What new words did you hear? Etc.

Part III

Your commentary. Please think about a topic that you could speak about for about 6 minutes. Take some notes on it. If we have time, please record a short sample of the commentary. For example: "Today I am going to talk about ... because ... I think that it is an important, interesting, amusing topic because ...

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Oral Com Day 1 September 21, 2007

Warm up discussion.

Part I

Recently in America there was a 300 million dollar lottery Jackpot. That is 300 oku yen. If you won such a prize, what would you do? What would be the good or bad things that can happen from such a situation? Please make a Pro / Con list.

Who would you tell first? What would you say? Would you conceal the information from anyone?

What would you buy? How would it change your life?

Part II

Imagine the telephone conversation that you would have with the first person you called with the news. Please find a partner and role play the conversation.

Part III

Do you really play the lottery? Some people in America say that the lottery is like a tax on the poor. Can you imagine what that means? Do you think it's true? - what about in Japan?

Part IV

Commentary. I want you to think about a situation that you could do a commentary about. Something similar to my Yaskuni one, but it could be about a very different event / experience. For example if you went to summer sonic, or traveled at all over the break. It could be about what you would like to do in the future, or what you would do if you could live your life over again.

Please take some notes, but do not write out a script. It should be a very natural kind of speaking.

Tongue Twisters Trial

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Class work for September 18th (Day 1)

Please do the following (30 minutes):

Part 1

Please watch the video individually, and try to summarize the basic meaning. Is it serious, or is it a joke? Share your interpretations with the people in your computer cluster.

There are a lot of new, interesting, challenging terms and phrases in the 2:42 of the broadcast. Please take a look at some of them.

Vocabulary:

gap, disenfranchised, gated-community, grotto, Martha's Vineyard (place), off-shore banking, tax breaks, distribution of wealth, "should the government be doing more to help?", yacht, "a drain on society", "to take issue with ____", "you'd never know it (by looking at you/it)"," "not looking for pity", "that's the way the world is", anecdotal, "that's a good point", American dream, oppressive, "the oppressive nature of _____", "heredity or environment", inertia, "condescending & ignorant", "what proof do you have?", hovercraft, "whistling a different tune" .


In The Know: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

Part 2 (10 minutes)

In America it is often said that the gap between rich and poor is growing, and that the middle class is disappearing. Do you think that this is happening in Japan?


Part 3 (30 minutes)

Introduction to podcasting. A podcast is a small file of either sound or video, that can be hosted on the internet, played on an IPOD (or similar device) or computer. It is a very modern, currently popular way of sharing media. We are going to listen to, watch, and create podcasts this semester.

Pronunciation and recording practice: To practice our speaking we are going recite and record tongue twisters, which will then be put up on the webpage. Get with a partner (or two) and choose one of the following tongue twisters. Practice several times together, then record yourselves reading in a single Sound Recorder file. Sound recorder is built in to your computers, and you get to it by going to

START - PROGRAMS - ACCESSORIES - ENTERTAINMENT - SOUND RECORDER

Record both you and your partner reciting your tongue twister 2 or 3 times. The recording limit is 1 minute. Do not stop recording in between times (because then it will create new files each time)

Send the file to me at david.p.odonnell@gmail.com. Make sure you put your names in the e-mail text.

The tongue twisters

Six sick slick slim sycamore saplings.

A box of biscuits, a batch of mixed biscuits

A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk,
but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.

Unique New York.

Betty Botter had some butter,
"But," she said, "this butter's bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter--
that would make my batter better."

So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

Six thick thistle sticks. Six thick thistles stick.

Is this your sister's sixth zither, sir?

A big black bug bit a big black bear,
made the big black bear bleed blood.

The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

Part 4 (in class if time permits, for homework if we run out)


Podcasted Commentary. A commentary can be a statement of someone's beliefs or interpretation of a specific event or topic. It could also be in the form of a personal narrative or a memoir. Please listen to the description of my trip to Yaskuni, and answer the following questions:

Why did I go there?
How did I feel before going there?
How did I feel after the trip?
What did I see out front?

Now try to think about a topic for a similar commentary.