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第６６回　WORKSHOP報告（８月２４日） / 参加者８７名

 

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《　今回のworkshop　》

 

○workshop参加人数：８７名（うち新人の方：１５名）

 

○【前半】：”日本語”をテーマとしたディスカッション

 

○【後半】：”グローバルリーダー”をテーマとしたディスカッション

 

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＜１：今日も８０人以上の方が参加されました＞

 

＜２：新人の方の自己紹介です＞

 

＜３：前半マテリアルの説明中です＞

 

＜４：後半マテリアルはSさんが作成してくれました＞

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＜英語サークル　E’s club　第６６回workshopのご案内＞

 

みなさまこんにちは。E’s club幹事のKです。第６６回workshopの詳細をお送りいたします。

今回は前半のマテリアルをTさんに、後半のマテリアルをSさんにご作成いただきました。

前半は「日本語」を、後半は「グローバルリーダー」をそれぞれテーマとしたディスカッションを行ないます。

 

[今週のマテリアル]

＜FIRST HALF＞

こんにちは。Tです。

今回は日本語について、英語でディスカッションしたいと思います。

 

<Agenda>

Japanese (language) is difficult to learn?

 

<Questions>

1. Do you think that Japanese is difficult to learn?

Please tell us what point is difficult (or easy) to learn Japanese.

 

2. Have you ever taught someone Japanese?

In case you have to teach Japanese someone who cannot speak Japanese at all, what point do you weight to teach?

(ex. Grammar, Pronunciation, Words, Conversation(Listening, Speaking), Writing, Reading, Honorifics…..)

Please tell us the reason you think.

 

3. Could you explain us the difference of following words in English?

(1)Nippon/Nihon　　　　　　　　　(2)<GA(が)>/<WA(は)> (私が・・・/私は・・・)

(3)Jishu(自首)/Shuttou(出頭) 　　(4)AHO(あほ)/BAKA（ばか）

(5)Zousui(雑炊)/Ojiya(おじや)　　(6)Danna(旦那)/Otto(夫)

(7)Mori(森)/Hayashi(林)

 

4. Do you speak any Japanese dialect?

Please tell us about dialects you use or you like.

 

<Articles>

How hard is it really to learn Japanese?

by Reiji Yoshida　(The Japan Times)

 

As a language so distinct from most others, Japanese has an air of mystery about it.

Though no longer considered a linguistic isolate, Japanese forms a family with only the Ryukyuan languages and its origin remains uncertain. For English speakers at least, it is considered one of the most difficult languages to master.

Following are basic questions and answers about some characteristics of the language:

 

How many people are using or learning the Japanese language in Japan?

Japanese is effectively the sole language of the country, and almost all of the 128 million natives speak it.

Although there are a number of dialects and accents around Japan, the essentially monolingual status that prevails here is quite rare, experts say. Several principal languages are widely spoken within the borders of most countries.

According to Nagoya University linguistics professor Ken Machida, there are between 6,000 and 7,000 living languages in the world today, which, if evenly distributed, would break down to about 30 per country.

In addition to native Japanese, 135,514 nonnatives were studying Japanese at 2,047 institutions in Japan in November 2005, according to the Cultural Affairs Agency.

Of those, 77.1 percent were from Asia, followed by 4.6 percent from North America, 3.7 percent from South America and 3.6 percent from Europe.

 

What is the situation overseas?

Outside of Japan, 2.98 million people in 133 countries are studying the language at 13,639 institutions, according to a 2006 survey by the Japan Foundation. This number, up 26.4 percent from the previous survey in 2003, does not include people teaching themselves or taking private lessons.

South Korea accounts for most Japanese-language learners, with 910,957, or 30.6 percent of the total overseas. In effect, one in every 52 South Koreans is studying Japanese in the classroom.

After South Korea, China comes in second at 23 percent of the total, followed by Australia at 12.3 percent, Indonesia at 9.2 percent, Taiwan at 6.4 percent and the United States at 4.0 percent.

 

Is the Japanese language truly difficult to master?

Contrary to popular belief, linguists agree that spoken Japanese is relatively easy to master compared with other languages, partly because it has only five vowels and 13 consonants. On the other hand, English has 12 vowels and 24 consonants.

According to professor Machida, Japanese verbs follow regular rules of conjugation with few exceptions, unlike English, Russian and Greek.

“Overall, it can be concluded that Japanese is a language relatively easy to master once (learners) acquire rules because there aren’t that many exceptions,” Machida wrote in his book “Gengo Sekai Chizu” (“World Map of Languages”), published in May.

It is Japanese in its written form that presents the most difficulties.

Experts agree the Japanese writing system is one of the most complex in the world because it combines five different systems – kanji, hiragana, katakana, Arabic numerals and even the Roman alphabet.

“I don’t think any other country in the world uses a letter system of such complexity,” wrote Haruhiko Kindaichi, one of the most well-known Japanese linguists, in his book “Nihongo no Tokushitsu” (“Characteristics of the Japanese Language”), published in 1991.

 

When was kanji introduced from China, and how were hiragana and katakana created?

No native Japanese writing system is known before the introduction of written Chinese in the fourth century.

The hiragana syllabary is traceable to the ninth century, when Chinese characters began to be used for their pronunciations, while katana developed from parts of kanji around the same time.

Most kanji have two different pronunciations, depending on whether they refer to words of Japanese (“kun yomi”) or Chinese (“on yomi”) origin.

 

How many Japanese words must be learned to become functional in the language?

According to a survey by the National Institute for Japanese Language, contemporary Japanese magazines use about 30,000 words, but 90 percent of sentences are constructed from a pool of just 10,000.

The figure is much larger than English and Spanish, each of which requires knowledge of about 3,000 words, while French requires only about 2,000 words, according to Kotobano Chishiki Hyakka (the Encyclopedia of Words), published in 1995.

The encyclopedia also explains that Japanese has a relatively large vocabulary because it has adopted so many foreign words to create neologisms.

 

What’s the origin of the Japanese language?

There are several hypotheses.

Although Korean grammar is similar, its vocabulary is largely distinct from Japanese.

And while Polynesian languages can sound superficially similar to Japanese, and some believe Polynesians settled on the archipelago long ago, the theory of a linguistic connection has been discredited.

Others have postulated a connection with Tibetan, modern-day Myanmar or even Tamil.

Only the Ryukyuan languages have a demonstrable connection to Japanese. Together they form the Japonic language family.

 

 

＜LATTER HALF＞

皆さんこんにちは。

Sと申します。

 

後半のテーマは「グローバルリーダー」についてです。

題材には最近NHKニュースで紹介された「ISAK」をとりあげています。

 

「ISAK」は各分野で次世代をリードしてゆける子ども達の育成を目指す、

高校生の男女を対象とした少人数制の全寮制インターナショナルスクールです。

 

普段あまり触れることのない話題かもしれませんが、

ディスカッションをするにあたって専門知識はいりませんので、

皆さんの考えや意見を自由にシェアして頂ければと思います。

どうぞ宜しくお願いします。

 

【Agenda】

“Nurturing global leaders in Japan?”

～International School of Asia, Karuizawa～

 

【Questions】

Q1. Is Leadership a ‘talent’? Can a limited number of people become a leader?

Or does everyone have the potential to become a leader? What do you think?

 

Q2. If you have children, do you want them to go to ISAK?

What are the merits and demerits of ISAK?

 

Q3. Do you think ISAK can produce the next generation of global leaders in a variety of fields?

 

Q4. Have you ever met the leaders you respect in your life?

If the answer is YES, what kind of people are they? What types of skills and personality do they have?

(Anyone is fine, e.g. your boss, famous president and historical figure.)

 

Q5. According to the article below, Kobayashi says what a global leader needs is ,“the ability to achieve breakthroughs”.

What’s an important ability to be a global leader?

 

<Extra>

Q6. What’s the difference between a Japanese leader and a global leader?

 

Q7. How can we acquire ‘global leadership skills’?

 

【Reference】

“Nurturing global leaders in Japan?”

May 30, 2013, JAPAN QUALITY REVIEW

 

Establishing an international boarding school there? There is one woman who thought such outrageous ideas might just fly: Rin Kobayashi *1.

 

The name of that school: the International School of Asia, Karuizawa *2, or ISAK *3. Its mission, a grand one: “To develop transformational leaders who explore new frontiers in service of the greater good for Asia and beyond.”

 

What made Kobayashi want to start such a school? The answer can be traced back to her own, formative high school experience.

 

Harboring doubts about the direction of education, Kobayashi dropped out of high school in her first year at a prestigious state institution. Having thus already given a glimpse into her unconventional nature, she went on to study at an international boarding school in Canada. There, learning alongside students from all over the world, she would acquire a diverse set of values to take home. On graduation, after studying development economics at the University of Tokyo, and obtaining a master’s degree in international education policy from Stanford, then studying education at a post-grad level, she spent the years 2006-08 involved in educating the poor for Unicef in the Philippines.

 

It was there that, witnessing first hand the enormous disparity between rich and poor, she says the need to train true global leaders capable of solving the world’s many problems was graphically brought home to her. On returning to Japan she set about establishing an international boarding school in her home country. Many thought it a highly reckless, impossible endeavor. With no capital, and no connections, what could one woman do by herself? But what Kobayashi did have was the ability to get things done, and an intense, inspiring personality. Her attempts to raise funds foundered, in part due to the GFC, but many people offered support. Then in 2011 came the Tohoku earthquake… Perhaps it was time to give up…the thought crossed Kobayashi’s mind.

 

Instead, the safety myth previously cultivated by Japan having crumbled away, donations to ISAK began to flood in from people who had noted the country’s lack of leaders capable of getting information out to the rest of the world. Apparently donations actually rose after the quake. Kobayashi had succeeded in single-handedly raising almost a billion yen.

 

To date only a summer school has been run, but in 2014, ISAK will at last open to high school students.

 

Students from a variety of backgrounds will gather in Karuizawa to be taught by a multi-talented team of teachers, recruited personally by Kobayashi from around the world, primarily from international boarding schools. The first step in Kobayashi’s grand vision is truly about to be realized.

 

Education is a job of staggeringly time-consuming proportions. When will the young people launching from ISAK be able to bring about innovation in the world and solve society’s issues? Eager to see that day, Kobayashi races about at full speed today. Many are racing with her toward the same goal, drawn irresistibly to her ideals and enthusiasm.

 

Many cite charisma as a quality required in a global leader, but Kobayashi says what a global leader needs is “the ability to achieve breakthroughs”. The ability to accept diversity, to inspire fellow-feeling in a large number of people, and to carry things through to the end, no matter what. A true global leader, in her view, is someone equipped with all these abilities.

 

Listening to this it suddenly struck me: has she noticed she’s the one with that charisma?

 

※　Rin Kobayashi Following a variety of roles including in investment banking and venture company management, switched to the arena of international cooperation that had long been her objective. After working in yen loans at the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, became involved in unofficial education for street children as a program officer at the Philippines office of Unicef. Has experience as an exchange student at an international boarding school in Canada on full Keidanren scholarship. In 1993 gained an International Baccalaureate Diploma; in 1998 graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Tokyo, and in 2005 earned a master’s degree from the education faculty of Stanford University.

 

※　The International School of Asia, Karuizawa is an international boarding school open for limited enrollments that aims to nurture children capable of forming the next generation of leaders in a variety of fields. The school is open to year 1 – 3 high school students, and is co-ed.

 

※  ISAK　HP: http://isak.jp/

 

【Sources】

・JAPAN QUALITY REVIEW

http://jqrmag.com/?p=5490&lang=en

 

・International School of Asia Karuizawa

http://isak.jp/about/about.html

 

・ニューズウィーク日本版〔From the Newsroom〕

http://www.newsweekjapan.jp/newsroom/2013/07/post-268.php

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