Tsukuba Intensive English (March, 2013)

Welcome to our Intensive English course. On this page you'll find links to the various files we'll be using inside and outside of class.

Class 1 (Monday, March 11): Class introduction, US-Japan, Internet Lifestyle

Class schedule
Introduction worksheet
Groups and topics worksheet

Japan and North America

A warmup worksheet on US, Canada, and Japan
Questions about Mr. Brokaw's video

Digital Life

I suspect, based on my lifetime of observation, that we humans tend to try to locate our place (or places) in the world. In my case, I belong to the so-called Baby Boomer generation, which includes the millions of people born in the 20 years after World War 2. You, however, have membership in the Internet Generation, those raised with the Internet.

Let's begin with a worksheet on digital devices, a mainstay of our modern world.

Having considered your personal Internet lifestyle, perhaps you noted some positive points. One of the most eloquent advocates of the benefits of the cybersphere is Clay Shirky, who penned an essay in 2010 titled The Internet makes us smarter (Shirky, 2010).

On the other hand, a fair number of people maintain that the Internet is not beneficial, instead causing considerable harm to users. Among those folks is Nicholas Carr, whose 2010 essay asserts that the Internet makes us dumber (Carr, 2010).

A small challenge for you, good people: how about giving up your cell phone and all of your other electronic devices for 90 days? One young man that did is Jake Reilly, featured in this interview and in the video below.

A recent article that expands on thie "dumber" angle is titled Are e-books making us stupid? (McCormack, 2010), which looks closely at what might become of libraries as we move increasingly toward reading e-books instead of paper books.

Symbols

A warmup worksheet question about symbols.
As you'll notice on this worksheet, tigers are a handy symbol to discuss. Of course, one example from American culture is below:

An interesting website on ancient symbols.

A thought-provoking article by Ann Swidler (1986) titled "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies." As you'll recall from class, you have some homework related to this article: questions on Swidler (1986).

A symbolic sidelight: Collecting something that all countries have in common. Here is Mr. Simpson's website.

Class notes #1

Academic Papers

As you know from class, I require polite email. Recall, too, that if you send me a file, the filename has a certain form.

Here's an example of the report style that you should use.

Introductions

Conclusions

Class 4 (Thursday, March 14): Topic 9, Topic 10

Class notes #4

Topic #9: Japanese and American Baseball

Some seriously old history of Japanese baseball (webpage)

Topic #10: Creativity

Creativity Crisis
Origins of Human Creativity (docx)
Origins of Human Creativity (pdf)

Class 5 (Friday, March 15): Topic 11, Topic 12

Class notes #5

Topic #11: Sports

Snowball fighting in Canada
Wife carrying
Chessboxing
Underwater hockey
Sasquatch tracking

Topic #12: Science in the US

Dr. Kandel and Memory
Second reading here

Class 6 (Monday, March 18): Exam, research presentations

Here are the sample PowerPoint presentations that we looked at in class. Please remember that your presentation needs to include a title slide, a table of contents slide, a Q&A slide, and a "Thank you for your attention" slide.
Art | Family | Food | Crime
Environment | Mass Media
Non-Government Organizations (NGOs)