Final review

Sorry for my late post. I have no excuse but forgot about this...

1. Like I said in the last class of AEP I was not fully satisfied with my presentation despite all the great work other group members contributed. Please note this is only addressed to my own part of the whole Teach For America presentation not to other members. What I learned, though, what I have to improve is not exactly the skills of demonstrating speech or ideas but the way I prepare for it. Preparation here refers to deciding on topics, collecting relevant pictures and images from websites, making outlines, construct a brief speech note, practice and rehearsal. The entire process tended to be halfway done partly simply because I was being lazy and also, and largely, because presentation skills regarding voice volume, body language, speech speed or intonation were focused on more than precedent preparation.

2. Now that I know what the main issue is I pursue to get the preparation process done more carefully with more time spent on it.

Teach For America

3. Finally, thank you Sylvan and Mark. You definitely helped me with widen my view on what it takes to make a great presentation. I honestly get inspired by whatever you demonstrated in front of us. The direction you showed us certainly led me to where I had not expected to reach if it was your intention or not... So, thank you again , I have no doubt the prospective AEP students will have great time and attain personal goals if you two are to stay in the same position. ありがとうございました！

PechaKucha

my PK presentation

It was my first experience of doing PK presentation. The best part I liked about this style is that it is a lot easier to organize my presentation since all the slides are given exactly 20 seconds and basically all I have to do is find 20 photos that appeal to me and are suitable for my topic and then arrange them along with my speech. That also means, though, that it is not as flexible as normal type of presentation. There were things that I wanted to go on to the detail but due to the time restriction I could not. Overall my impression about PK is that it can be useful depending on what the topic is about and how serious and important your presentation is (I personally liked it).

First Presentation

1. Voice (Volume, rate, pausing, emphasis etc) 

Reflection: I mumbled several times.  

Goals:I tend to say things that are not planned to be in presentation especially when I'm nervous. That'S when I start mumbling because I myself am not even sure what I'm saying. So it seems that more practices and confidence must take place and gained before the actual presentation day.

2. Body Language (Eye contact, gestures, posture etc) 

Reflection:Not sure, to be honest. I sure looked forth to the audience almost all the time so my nervousness did not show much though I really was, which is good. 

Goals:More use of body language will help audience understand what I am putting emphasis on.  

3. Visuals (Images or text on slides, timing etc) 

Reflection:All the slides that were to be presented were in my head so I was able to avoid looking at the slides to make sure the right slide is on the screen. I could have taken more time to prepare for it, though, to make it more interesting and for more impact. It was rather boring. 

Goals:More effort on preparing an stimulating and interesting slides that provoke the audience's curiosity.  

4. Preparation Process (Topic selection, notes, visuals creation, rehearsals etc) 

Reflection:The topic was appropriate for a presentation as short as 3 minutes. But like I mentioned earlier, more practices could have helped me improve the presentation. For instance, if I had spent more time practicing the presentation would have been done smoothly so that I would not have run out of time. 

Goals:I must start preparing presentations sooner than 2 or 3 days before presentation day, which I've been doing. The day before the presentation must be dedicated to lots of rehearsals instead of still composing it.  

5. Any other reflections or goals?

Overall, it was not too good not too bad type of quality, which is only satisfactory or worse. Since one of my goals is to learn the way to prepare presentations more efficiently should I try and devote more time in it.  Another thing is that I cannot help but feel the need of getting my pronunciation corrected and improved. I never had a chance to hear myself speak English and it was rather shocking when I did. This is not to say that it was hard to understand but it sounded strange and weird. It could be due partly to the accent I got from staying in S.A. for one year and that it's mixed up with Japanese accent. But I believe it's mostly because I'm just not good enough yet. 

First assignment: TED Video

a)My general impression on this speaker was that her speech was pretty clear. What I mean with clear here is that the pace of her speech was appropriate, not too fast nor too slow, she made it easy for listeners to know what are the important points by putting emphasis on and the effective use of visual media such as showing photos of tuna to describe how beautiful they are.

b)She is capable of showing the audience how much she understands about the field she is specialized in. I can see she is confident and all the things she say are firmly in her head not from memorization of some document, which I think is quite important to make the speech persuasive and convincing.

c)Maybe she could present the name of certain places or buildings on screen or say them more slowly. Some places sound pretty interesting and will be good to visit but she goes past it swiftly and I did not have much chance to catch the word like ".........Aquarium, here over fifty........". This is not really related to her presentation skill but I must say that I did not like how she mentioned Japan. I know I'm supposed to list the weakness of the presentation. at least more than two of it, but I do not come up with any more for now...

YAY I got a much better score than the last one for the second essay!!! getting comments and pointed out of the mistakes and stuff is really worthwhile for the next essay:)

Last Class with Rab... and my plan for the project

Since I maybe am supposed to be talking about the class I'm gonna start off by commenting on the lecture... Well we watched a video in which students from two high schools are trying to get their government to make the bill on weapon trade limitation more strict. there were several funny and shocking parts like the sh*t throwing machine which could kill people as the Israeli guy said 'you stand there I kill you' or something like that. well it was real shocking and very funy:DD
There is one idea of what im going to do for the project in the next semester is something like get some restaurants or hotels that presently are for only Japanese to change there policy into being open to foreigners as well. or at least trying to find a way and put it into action during the winter semester when we will have some extra time for not having ELP. I am not sure yet of course but it is something that ELP teachers will be interested and that should be done to be prepared for the more rapid decrease in population. ELP course taught me that it is an argent issue that we must do something about. I already talked about this with Yuga and she is in a way interested in different thing but in another way we are heading in the same direction so we might be doing this together. If any of you are interested please let me know:)))


For me, and most likely for the other CB students, Rab has been such a great teacher including even the times he tricked us and made us feel stupid more or less. Thank you so much. You taught us literary how to think. The way we are supposed to do to be a critical thinker. On the way, though, I sometimes thought that I do not want to be critical because then I would start to see so many dirty things and keep thinking and thinking so endlessly and have no time to breathe or to become doubtful to everything and trust nothing, which sound to my ears so pathetic. That was my honest feeling at some stage. But facing so many facts and truth, I know it was just a small portion of what is really going on, I start to feel that being ignorant is a kind of crime if I live in a country like Japan. You get stuff for such a cheap price and the facts that many people are forced to work for nearly nothing are not to be seen under words like 'economic crisis'. In the country you would not say 'I do not think one committed a crime if the person does not realize that he/she did it'. But what we are doing outside the country maybe in Africa or South America is about the same. In Tokyo it is illegal to hire people for under 791 yen but in countries in regions like listed earlier people are hired and paid little, if any, so that we get stuff so cheap. Does that make sense???? Don't tell me yes.
Thank you Rab again for opening my eyes. I was almost blind and now I see a little more and as I keep on in ELP I see more and more!:)) hopefully

Oh and I dig my new background picture:)