How long should my paper or presentation be?

June 11th, 2015

Professor, how long should my report be?

Professor, how long should my presentation be?

I get these questions a lot.

I have these requirements given to me as well. When writing papers, it’s fairy common to have page requirements.

I understand there are cases where it is helpful to have at least a general idea of how long, or short, a paper or presentation should be, but I often reply with a joke. This joke:

Question: How long should your legs be?

Answer: Long enough to reach the ground.

This is supposed to be funny, and maybe it is, but it is also to make a point. Legs are different lengths based on whose legs they are. Yet, for the most part, they perform the same functions even with being different in length.

If your paper or presentation meets its requirements it will be the proper length. So, what are those requirements?

Given your thesis statement or purpose, do you answer all of the questions completely enough?

That’s it.

No more.

No less.

Those questions are different for different topics and situations, but you should be able to discern what those questions are and then whether you have answered them completely enough.

“You” should be able to do that. Your teacher is looking for that in your work. Did you fulfil the basic requirements? Did you provide enough detail, enough support, enough specific information to make and and support your point or to complete your story?

Then that is long enough.

Here’s a picture I used in one of my classes. What are the ‘questions’?

group-04-10

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Akame in Mie 48 Waterfalls

June 4th, 2015

A couple of weekends ago my wife and I went on a Saturday excursion to Mie prefecture to walk in the mountains and see some beautiful waterfalls.

The area is called Akame 48 Waterfalls – but there aren’t really 48 waterfalls though there are certainly a large number of them in varying sizes, heights and widths. Some really beautiful weather for our day and the walk was not too hard. I saw a lot of huff-and-puffers we passed along the way, but we walk a lot so we made the nearly 18 kilometers for our day fairly easily.

It was a 3 hour bus ride there, and 3 hours again to get home. That ride back was not so comfortable after all of that walking. Still, it wasn’t too bad and it is always nice to get out with my wife when we get the chance to enjoy a nice, slow time together.

Here’s a link to some more information about the place we visited:

http://www.travel-around-japan.com/k54-04-akame-48-waterfalls.html

Here is one of my favorite pictures we took there.

Akame waterfall

Akame waterfall

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Pronunciation Practice – Accent and Stress Drill

May 28th, 2015

This year I am back to teaching a class on presentation skills.

Some presentation classes focus on collecting your content and organizing it well, along with preparing it for the proper audience.

We do that, too, but in my class we also talk about the importance of stress, tone, pitch, and accents when speaking to help people understand better.

English can be understood more easily than many Asian languages for the simple fact that accents and tones and pitch help listeners to decipher which words are the most important and where the meaning is really coming from.

Here’s a little drill I created to help students practice emphasizing different words to move meaning and to help listeners to understand them better.

Before the class, I created several sentences of varying length. Each of the sentences had no repeated vocabulary. This is a little challenging with the repetition of so many prepositions and articles in English, but I was able to fashion several rather lengthy sentences to meet this requirement.

Then I had the students repeat the sentences word by word and move the accent from the first word to the last as they went. We did this by having one student do the same sentence alone from beginning to end and also by going around the room and having the students take turns and having to accent the word following the one that had been accented in the previous speaker’s sentence.

Here’s a quick example:

He wants chocolate cake.

He wants chocolate cake.

He wants chocolate cake.

He wants chocolate cake.

Now, you can also do this by creating a rising, questioning tone on each word as well to change the emphasis.

So “He? wants chocolate cake.” (This is a question about ‘who’ wants chocolate cake.)

He wants? chocolate cake. (This is a question about whether or not he ‘wants’ chocolate cake.)

He wants chocolate? cake. (This is a question about what kind of cake he wants. Chocolate, of course ;-))

He wants chocolate cake? (This is a question about what kind of chocolate food he wants.)

Now, this might seem trivial, but it is useful, and if done quickly and in turns, a fun and engaging exercise for class.

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Snail race in my garden

May 21st, 2015

So, this happened…

We were outside puttering around in the garden when we saw what looked like a race to ‘somewhere’ between two snails. We have a fair number of snails in the garden, so seeing them isn’t a big thing, but these two were seriously moving towards something we could be sure about…

We’ve of course lost a few on the deck because they get stepped on, but I try hard to not disturb them. I don’t know why, but for some reason I really like these guys and enjoy watching them. They are out most mornings early.

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Writing prompt

May 14th, 2015

This semester for my writing class I have moved back to using writing prompts at the beginning of each class. Although this is an academic writing course, most of my prompts are more imaginative than academic. That said, I do believe that getting students writing, about anything, is always helpful and a good way to boost their confidence about their writing skills as well.

This week’s class was slightly geared toward returning from Golden Week (one of the major stretches of holidays here in Japan) but you could use this without the holiday angle.

This week’s prompt was:

“While I was ____________ during Golden Week, I broke my leg.”

As usual I instructed them to give me as many of the 5 senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste) as possible in their stories and to tell me what happened, how, and what the impact of the accident was.

They did not disappoint 😉

Here’s the quick sketch I added to the whiteboard to kick (sorry! ;-)) things off:

brokenlegpicture

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