Presentation

I finished the group project of bilingual education course.

I was so happy because through this group project every member was very king and helped me a lot. They checked and edited my poor writing English, they taught me a lot of funny things about the United States and the UCSD. I am a really lucky person who can meet such nice people. Other groups seem not so friendly as us.

Speaking of presentation, I felt a little bit nervous before starting, but I did well.
Our topic of the project was searching for the Canadian bilingual education.
My part was comparative analysis of bilingual education between Canada and the United States.

Summarizing, I can say Canada has official languages: English and French. But the United States doesn't have any official languages. This has a big influence on people's attitude toward bilingual education. Many of Canadian have incentives to learn French. They are very positive, because it is declared that French is also an official language. In contrast, some Anglophone citizens have xenophobia and they don't feel necessity to learn foreign languages. This makes differences in success of bilingual education..

Finally, after doing a presentation. We took a group picture as my memory.

Thank you, Ariel, Nader, Mat, Ariadne, Margaret, Sarah, and Audrey.


By the way,

one of the Japanese students in this study abroad program talked to me about what courses she is going to take.

She said, "I am going to "English Conversation" course opened at UCSD extension.

I asked her, "Why?"

She said, "I don't feel any progress of my English skills though I have been here already for three months. I want to improve my English skills and communicate with native speakers better, that is why I will take conversation course."

Me : ".............."

I said nothing to her anymore at that time...

but that was a totally stupid idea, because...

1. We cannot improve foreign language skills in such a short time period like three months even if we are in a foreign country. Second language acquisition doesn't happen only in one night. We really need to be patient.


2. Even if she takes the "conversation course", she might not be able to communicate with native speakers of English smoothly. That is because there might (must) be a lot of "non-native" speakers (especially lots of Japanese) in the "conversation course". It might be meaningless for her to converse with non-native speakers in the class.


3. "Conversation course" sounds so boring. Think about if we take the course named "Conversation" in our native language. There is no interesting contents in it. First of all, there is nothing we can learn in terms of academic. The only thing she can gain from that course is lots of Japanese friends who doesn't speak English well.


4. Wanting to be able to communicate with native speakers? What for do we live in a dorm!? Everyone (of-course including she and me) lives in a dorm with NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH. They are next to the door. She can talk with them every time. She has already enough opportunity for practice.


5. UCSD extension is not actual UCSD. I was wondering why she doesn't  take usual regular courses of UCSD, even if she can take them. What for did she come here? She can take "conversation course" even in NOVA..lol


Oops.

I got a little bit critical...
But I'm pretty sure that I don't think that's good idea.

In terms of second language acquisition, we need to be patient.

Luckily, I feel my English (especially listening skills and speaking skills) improving, though.

good night