This I Believe

I would like to recommend an essay that you can read and listen to. It is part of a series called "This I Believe" on National Public Radio from the United States. The name of the essay is "All Men Are My Brothers" and it was written by and is read by James Michener, a very famous American author. Please click here to go to the essay.

Fall Semester

Hi!

For those of you who are new to this class, welcome! For those of you who participated in the spring or last year, welcome back!

I have separate instructions for the new students and the returning students.

• For new students

I would like to begin by having you do what students who participated in the spring semester class did. Please click here for instructions.


• For Returning students

I would like you to continue doing the kind of reading and blogging that you did last semester. Please note that I have added to the list of links called "AUDIO AND TEXT" that you see on the right-hand side of this page. Please refer to these links. I hope you will listen to material that you read.

As we say in Japan, yoroshiku!

New Links

I have added some links to this blog. If you look on the right side of the this page, I think you will see a group of links called "DICTIONARIES." Underneath that, you should see a group of links called "AUDIO AND TEXT." Here, I introduce sites that provide text that you can also listen to. Most of the these links used to be in another place on my web site. One link, however, is new. It is the 週刊 ST Essay link. Some of the vocabulary in these essays is rather difficult but their quality is good I think. They seem to have been recorded by professional announcers -- though I would have preferred to hear the voices of the people who wrote the essays.

I hope you find these links to be useful.

Your grade

I talked about grades with the students who came to either the last class or next to last class this semester. If you did not come to either of those classes you need to contact me.

What were you reading?

Please click here to see something I wrote last year about information you should include in your posts about what you read.

Listening to audio files

Today we learned that Nintendo's DS plays AAC files very nicely. iTunes can be used to convert files to AAC. If you want to listen to audio files on a Docomo phone, it seems that you need to convert the files to mp4. Click here to see how to convert files to mp4 on a Windows computer.

What to read

I have links to a couple of resources that provide both text and audio on the "Tools" page of my website. The "Tools" page has a link to LibriVox. There are many books and stories in LibriVox. In fact, there are so many that it can be difficult to find something that is not too difficult. I would like to recommend Robinson Crusoe for Children. You can download the audio to this book here. Also, I added some more links in a post on my blog last year. I will introduce other links little by little over the course of the semester.

Good example

We are off to a slow start. Many members of this class have not posted yet. Some of the people who did post forgot to include the sentences in which they found the vocabulary that they looked up.

However, some in the class are doing well. Here's an example of a blog entry that I think is very good: がちゃがちゃごちゃごちゃ.

First class of 2009

Hi!

Welcome to Gaisho Kodoku (Readings in English)! I hope you enjoy the course. Today I would like you to do the following:

Start a blog, read and listen to my essay called "How to Learn English", and post a message about what you read on your blog.

1. Starting your blog

Click here to go to a site called "Blogger" where you can start your blog. Follow the directions you will see on that page to start a new blog. Remember that you do not need to use your real name.

After you make your blog, send the address to me at masden@kumagaku.ac.jp.


2. Reading and listening to "How to Learn English"

Click here to open the web page containing the text and audio for this essay. Click here to access a page of links to dictionaries that you can use to look up the words you do no know. I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio as well. If you have an mp3 player, you may want to download the mp3 file to put in your mp3 player so that you can listen to it when you want to.


3. Posting your first message

Write a message about "How to Learn English." In the message include the following:



1. At least three words or expressions that you did not know before you read this essay. Also write the sentence in which you found the word and an appropriate definition from a dictionary.
   
2. A question or two about something you did not understand.
3. Comments about or a short summary of the essay.

I don't think you will be able to finish all of this today. You will need to finish the assignment in your spare time before the start of class next week.

Please raise your hand to ask for help if you have any trouble.