Issues in EFL in Japan (Not currently being updated)

Students give advice on how to study English

2006-10-28T11:25:00.000+09:00

This is from pinch hitter. Hey! I'm PINCH HITTER! I made an original brochure for those who want to study English with us. If you are interested in
・English
・English education
・English grammar
・American literature
・British litarature etc.

why don't you see my brochure?

こんにちは。私は日本のある大学生のPINCH HITTERといいます。
私の通っている大学で大学祭があり、高校生対象の説明会でオリジナルのパンフレットをつくりました。（こんなあなたにおすすめです）
・英語が好きなあなた！
・英語教育に興味のあるあなた！
・英語の文法が得意なあなた！
・アメリカ文学やイギリス文学に興味のあるあなた！
・英語ぺらぺらになりたいあなた！
・先生になりたいあなた！
・英語マニアのあなた！
・苦手な英語を克服したいあなた！
Don't miss it!

Our Strengths and Weaknesses as English Teachers

2006-08-08T11:51:00.000+09:00

In our final lesson, we met in the Iwate University Sculpture Garden and students shared lesson plans they had made based on a page of a junior high school English text book called New Horizon.
First, we met in the middle of the sculpture garden. Students made pairs and walked around the sculpture garden talking about each other's lesson plans. After 15 minutes, everyone returned to the center of the sculpture garden and we made new pairs. The pairs walked around the garden for another 15 minutes comparing lesson plans. The point of this excercise was for us to receive feedback on our lesson plans and also get ideas from our classmates. Students will begin their teaching practicum in 2 weeks!
After this exercise, I asked students to write about their strengths and weaknesses as language teachers. Here are the students who have written about the topic:
Happy Days
Elle
John Wang
Cheesecake
Leo
Eringo
Lion
Mibora
Mihotch
Nyanmage
Onchan
Fantasista
74Napochi
Maruchan - Part 1
Maruchan - Part 2
Gakusei
Minesuke

ETM3 Students' Experience with Group Work

2006-07-20T07:35:00.000+09:00

I asked ETM 3 students to write about the following:

Please describe an experience you had either as a student or a teacher where you tried a groupwork or pairwork activitiy and it did not go well. What went wrong with the activity and how could it have been changed to make it work?

Here are the students' responses:
Minesuke
Pinch Hitter
Chocolate Ice Cream
Happy Days
Elle
Cheesecake
John Wang
Eringo
Mibora
Mihotch
Onchan
RIP
Napoti
Gakusei

ETM 3 Blogs about Teaching Grammar

2006-07-12T16:40:00.000+09:00

I gave ETM3 students a list of all the grammar taught in Japanese junior high schools and asked them to write about which grammatical element on the list was most difficult for them to learn and how would they teach it. Below I have listed the names of the students and grammar that the students wrote about:

Happy Days: Relative Pronouns
Cheesecake: Present Perfect Tense
John Wang: Present Perfect Continuous
Eringo: Present Perfect
Patapata: Present Perfect Tense
Shota: Indirect Interrogatives
ELLE: Relative Pronouns
RIP:
Relative Pronouns

Visiting Mr. M's School

2006-07-12T16:29:00.000+09:00

A few weeks ago Mr. M, an English teacher in Morioka, came to our class and gave us some general advice about how to teach in a junior high school. Students of ETM3 highlighted the important parts of Mr. M's presentation in their blogs and used the information to give advice to ALTs or university students who were about to begin work at a junior high school (see the previous post). Last week, we went to Mr. M's school and observed some classes. ETM 3 learners wrote about what they observed and how the priniciples Mr. M talked about were evident in the English classes at his school. Below are the posts of students who wrote about going to Mr. M's school:

Lion
Mihotch
Napochi
Pinch Hitter
Yuyanikki
Minesuke
Yoshie hb

ETM3 Students give advice to people planning to work in Japanese Junior High Schools

2006-06-27T22:00:00.000+09:00

Last week, Mr. M, an English teacher from a junior high school in Morioka, came to our class and talked to us about working as an English teacher in a Junior High School in Japan. From this lecture we were able to get a lot of good ideas about the challenges of teaching English and how to interact with students. We also learned a lot about the working life of a junir high school student. I asked ETM3 students to write a post in their blogs and give advice to prospective English teachers or ALTs in a Japanese junior high school. I asked them to base their advice on Mr. M's lecture and their own knowledge. We have already had a number of students write posts and I will attach the links of students who have written posts as the posts come in.

Happy Days
Cheesecake
Jimbo
Eringo
Lion
74Napotchi
Gakusei
Minesuke
Pinch Hitter
John Wang
Riverdance
Mihotch
Nyanmage
Fantasista
Elle
RIP
Head Banger
Leo
Patapata
On-chan
Monchichi
Eri-chan
Amemane
Chocolate Ice Cream
There will be more links soon!

ETM3 Students Blog about their Futures and Issues they Face in the Present

2006-06-15T00:05:00.000+09:00

Last week, I asked students in ETM3 to write about whatever was on their minds. One popular theme was "What should I do in the future?"
Cheesecake is thinking about becoming a Kindergarten Teacher while Eringo writes that the more she learns the more confused she becomes about what she wants to be! Mitoch writes that in the future she wants to use English for her work. To be honest, I (JH) used to think that I wanted to use Japanese some day for my work, and not I am!
74napochi wrote two very interesting posts. One about how her life has changed as a university student and another about her dreams and the harsh reality of life.

There were also a lot of ETM3 students who wrote candidly about the anxiety they were feeling about their 1 month long teaching practice starting in September. Lion wrote about her frame of mind as she prepares to English at a junior high school. Happy Days asks for advice about how she should prepare for her teaching practice at an elementary school. She says that although she has experience teaching English, elementary school teachers have to be able to teach all subjects!

Some students blogged about their teaching experiences: Pinch Hitter talks about his experience working with a Brazilian ALT and Happy Days talks about her experience as a volunteer at a nursing home to fulfill a requirement for her teacher's license.

Lastly, Gakusei blogs about the best way to translate "seisyun" into English.

Gov't panel wants unmotivated students to forgo teacher-training

2006-06-14T23:52:00.000+09:00

There is a movement to have universities prevent unmotivated students from doing teacher training because they cause trouble.
Do you think this is a problem?
Here is the link below:
http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/375649

Problems with Teacher Education and ETM3

2006-06-10T14:28:00.000+09:00

In my personal blog, I wrote about some of the problems I see with teacher education. It is a little long but please read it if you have the time. My main argument was the primary problem with teacher education is that students take classes just to receive the credit they need to get their licenses and not because they have any interest in the class. This, I believe, can lead to students to view learning as "just doing what you are being told to do" rather than something you do to satisfy your own curiousity.
Recently, I realized that I might have been giving ETM3 members too many detailed blogging assignments causing you to lose interest in blogs as a means to share your thoughts, ideas, and experiences with other people and to get their reactions. This week, I would like you to write about anything you want to (But if you do not want to write, then don't write). For example, Pinch Hitter has written about his experience teaching English in Kitakami. Happy Days has written about her once in a lifetime chance as a nursing home volunteer (a requirement to get your teacher's license) . Happy Days also has asked for some advice on how she should prepare to teach all subjects for her elementary school teaching practice. Maybe some students who have already done her elementary school teaching practice can give her some advice! Reading these two blogs have given me some hope for teacher education. Despite the problems, we have many dedicated aspiring teachers who will some day make wonderful contributions to education in Japan.

Bizzare Japanese English Education Videos

2006-06-07T21:26:00.000+09:00

These are the most bizzare English conversation instructional materials I have seen and were produced by a Japanese television station.

The first video was taken from Daniel Kirk's blog. We watched it in ETM3.

The second video was taken from the blog of an American living in Korea.

What do you think of these videos? What would you tell someone watching these videos outside of Japan. Do you think this would give them false images of English education in Japan?

Our First Practice Lesson!

2006-05-29T14:56:00.000+09:00

Last Thursday in ETM3 we had two practice lessons. One group of teachers taught pages 16 and 17 from the first year New Horizon junior high school text book. The key sentences on these pages were "Is this ~?" "Is that ~ " . A graduate student from the Uygur Autonomous Region in China was nice enough to join us and let the teachers teach him some English! The list of the first group of teachers is below:
Happy days
Bear or Toshi?
Fantasista
Chocolate-ice-cream
Gakusei

The second group of teachers taught pages 36 and 37 of the first year New Horizon junior high school text book. Two Spanish teachers from Moriako were nice enough to come to the class and participate as students. The key sentence for pages 36 to 37 was "What do you have for breakfast?" The list of the second group of teacher is below:
Patapata
The Leo
Mibora
RIP
Elle
Mihotch

I asked each teacher to write a reflection on their blogs and the other members of ETM3 to comment on them. I am looking forward to reading the posts and comments. I have also written my comments on the lessons here.

Before the teachers taught, I had advised them to organize their lesson as below:
1. Warm-up
2. Review
3. Introduction of New Material: Usually a key sentence
4. Practice: A mixture of drilling and communicative activities
5. New Words: Introduce the wew words presented in the text
6. Reading: Practice the reading text in the textbook
7. Consolidation: Summarize and confirm what was studied

This structure came from the below teacher training book (in Japanese) for teachers at junior and senior high schools in Japan. I have found that the above style works well for doing a typical textbook lesson for first and second year junior high school classes. I do not know if this could all be covered in a typical high school class though.

米山朝二、杉山敬、多田茂. (2002). 『英語科教育実習ハンドブック』大修館.

A Follow Up on the Translating Program Post

2006-05-25T11:43:00.000+09:00

This is what I told my students in a freshmen university English class after over half of them used a translating program to write an essay for a homework assignment:

"The English that you write is much better than the English that a translating program can produce. Translating programs have the following problems:
1) It rarely translated the subject of a sentence correctly.
Example:"Since it was a long time, it was very glad to have me and her."
2) It uses a lot of verb tenses but most of their use is awkward or incorrect.
Example: "I slept all too soon, but, at late-night 2:00, have woken up."
3) It uses expressions that are very bizarre.
Example: ".... the same suitable person agreed at all and was going to but the tape!"

"I look forward to reading your essays no matter how good or bad you think your English is. Reading your essays is a good way to get to know you and also to learn your strong points and weak points in English. I actually like seeing mistakes because it gives me clues as to how I can help you. This time, I gave you all credit for your papers put next time I see a paper with English from a translating program I will tear it up and give you a 0. "

I just ran into Pinch Hitter in the hall and he recommended that I show students how a translation program translated English to Japanese so they can understand the imperfections of translating programs. Good advice!

I think the fact that so many students used a translating machine is a sad comment about English education. As most of you wrote in the previous post, the students had little experience writing and trying to express themselves in English. Many scholars of English education in Japan write that adoption of the communicative approach has lowered students grammatical ability in English and thus their English proficiency (for example, see Oka, H. et al., 2004). However, many of the students that I teach REALLY STRUGGLE to express themselves in English, because they have little experience doing so. Many of you said in the previous post that students are busy studying for their entrance examinations. If their ability in grammar is actually decreasing and many students' ability to communicate low, it makes me wonder what students are doing in their junior and senior high school English classes.

Reference
Oka, H. , Akaike, H., Sakai, S. (2004). eigo jugyouryoku kyouka manyuaru. Taishuukan.

Why do students with six years of learning English need translating programs?

2006-05-18T21:07:00.000+09:00

This week I had a frustrating experience. I teach a freshmen English class at a university other than Iwate University. The students in the class had an assignment due last week(May 11). We had read a story about coincidences and I asked them to write about a coincidence that had happened to them. I asked them to write about 100 words. I never count how many words a student writes but I usually set a word limit to ensure that students write more than a sentence. I was hoping that today (May 18) students would read some of their papers to each other because the topic was interesting. Whenever I give an assignment I am sure to use it somehow in the next class to motivate students to do the assignment. Well, last night, as I was going over the papers I realized that about half of the 20 students in the class had used a translating maching to write their papers. In other words, they had written some kind of essay in Japanese on their computer and had some program translate it all into English. Usually the English from translating programs is completely incomprehensible. I was shocked that so many students would hand me in something that was so ridiculously artificial.
These students are for the most part enthusiastic and I have enjoyed working with them so far. In fact, every week I look forward to the class. This class is not a remedial English class, and I think that every learner in that class has potential in English.
Can you tell me some possible reasons why students who have studied English for 6 years feel the need to use a translating program to write a simple paragraph in English? Also, if you were me, what would you tell the students?
Please respond by making a comment to this post. I will let you know what I told the students after reading your answers.

Talking to Teachers in Taiwan about Vocabulary Teaching and What ETM3 Students Learned

2006-05-17T17:13:00.000+09:00

Last week, the learners in ETM3 started corresponding with learners in Alice Chui's English Teaching Methodologies class at Tamkang University in Taipei. Last March, Ms. Chui asked her class to think about how they were taught vocabulary when they were in junior and senior high school and also to write about what they think it the best way to teach vocabulary. In ETM3 we have also recently reviewed and experienced various ways of teaching vocabulary.
I asked learners in ETM3 to visit some students' blogs in Ms. Chiu's class (see the list below) to try to get some new perspectives on vocabulary teaching.

Nineteen of twenty-four students in ETM3 visited the blogs below and wrote a total of 24 comments. Tomorrow (May 18) in ETM3, I will ask students what they learned from reading the blogs from Tamkang University and post what they had to say below.

Posts from students at Tamkang University about Vocabulary Teaching
Cathy
Estela
Gillian
Iris
Miranda
Nancy
Shirley
Wings of Angel
Posts Related to Vocabulary Teaching from Students at Tamkang University
Gabriel (Explains the origin of the phrase "It's raining cats and dogs")
Olivia (Presents vocabulary and grammar learning websites)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In ETM 3, students made the following comments concerning what they learned from their colleagues at Tamkang University:
Teaching Vocabulary:

Motivation to learn language is very important. English teachers should not force students to study English because students will start learning English when they’re interested.
Happy Days said "it is better to teach vocabulary because we can save time but I think that by learning in class and reviewing at home it connects to true acquisition. It is not important for teachers to teach the important thing is to show how to study."
John, representing his group, said that one problems was revealed about teaching vocabulary: It is hard to help students remember words. He also said that there were two approaches to teaching vocabulary: 1, a technical approach (present and learn) and 2, an approach where teachers try to make the experience interesting. He added that his groups realized that it is important for a teacher to be very devoted to his/his students and Vocabulary learning should have a touch of interest.
Elle, representing his group, said that his group members realized th following:
To know syllable and pronunciation helps to memorize vocabulary and effective dictionary using helps vocabulary learning.

Other Observations:

Heabanger, speaking for his group, made the observation that Alice is a very eager teacher; "she has a passion for her students and she devised her lesson very much."
Headbanger also was impressed with how well trained the teachers at Tamkang University were and Elle noted that Taiwan teachers study very hard.

I would like to conclude this post by thanking everyone at Tamkang University for their participation and I look forwatd to reading more of your blogs and having more discussions with you in the future.

Students Analyzing their Learning Experiences - A Follow up

2006-05-11T21:58:00.000+09:00

MORE OF THE SURPRISING TRUTH!
On the post below, I summarized the results of the questionnaire I gave ETM3 learners about their language learning experience. I also summarized learners' responses to the following 5 statements: 1. My most enjoyable language learning experience has been…. 2. My least enjoyable language learning activity has been … 3. My most valuable language learning activity has been … 4. My least valuable language learning activity has been .... 5. In general my language learning experience has been ....
Today, in class, ETM3 learners talked about what they thought was most interesting about the results. Here is a summary of what they said:

Most of the ETM 3 members tended to enjoy such language learning activities as watching TV, learning songs and speaking English with their teachers. These activities had characteristics of speaking and listening
Most people think that all the activities on the questionnaire were valuable except writing poetry. (Note from JH. Cheesecake did write that it was her most enjoyable activity though.)
Most ETM learners thought activities such as memorization, translating and grammar rules were valuable but were not fun.
Some people think that reading aloud is valuable but some people did not. Chocolate Ice Cream said in class that reading aloud is not valuable because there is a difference between reading and conversation. She elaborated “I think reading aloud is not valuable because readers do not focus on the meaning.”
Two people think that reading aloud is valuable but one person think it is not valuable. Why this difference?
Many people think memorization is least enjoyable but valuable. Why does least enjoyable become most valuable? We think that is because if we study memorization we can get a high score so it is valuable.
Most of us thought that all athe language learning activities were valuable.
Most people do not like memorization but they think it is valuable.
RIP thinks conversation is very important but if we don’t know grammar we cannot speak English.

Students Analyze their Language Learning Experiences and Reveal the Shocking Truth!

2006-05-10T20:48:00.000+09:00

Thanks to the hard work of Olive and Montitti, we were able to add the results of the questionnaire that learners in ETM3 answered. The results can be viewed here, and the original questionnaire can be viewed here. What surprised me most was that learners of ETM3 marked almost every langauge learning activity listed on the questionnaire as valuable. Even such unpopluar activities as translating were considered valuable. For example, 7 out of 17 students said they disliked translation but all 17 said it was valuable.
As written in my previous post, members of ETM3 were asked to analyze their English learning experience by completing 6 statements after they filled out the questionnaire. They completed the statements in their blogs and wrote reasons for their answers. In this post, I have categorized the responses and written the number of responses in each category. The questions and results are below. Some reponses fell in more than one category. To learn more about these responses, please read the students' blogs.
Statement 1. My most enjoyable language learning experience has been…
9 conversation
3 music
1 Teaching English at an elementary school
1 poetry
1 watching tv
1 Teaching English in Thailand
1 The Spanish lesson with JH
1 structured speaking
1 repetition
1 memorization
1 reading aloud
1 translating
1 writing sentences
1 homestay in the US
1 class with an excellent teacher

Statement 2: My least enjoyable language learning activity has been …
5 university entrance exam study
3 memorization
2 reading silently
2 dictation
2 language lab
2 structured speaking
2 grammar
1 repetition
1 tests

Statement 3: My most valuable language learning activity has been …
4 Conversation
2 reading aloud
2 repetition
2 Nakano
2 reading
2 memorization
2 grammar
1 1st and 2nd grade high school class
1 High School English Club
1 new words
1 UN Seminar
1 Fun

Statement 4: My least valuable language learning activity has been ....
4 nothing
3 reading silently
2 translation
1 Reading aloud
1 jr. high school english home study
1 poetry

Statement 5: In general my language learning experience has been ....
4 memorization, grammar, and reading
2 not enough
1 speaking, listening and reading
1 experiential
1 paper work
1 wide
1 poor
1 confusion to realization
1 speaking and listening
1 reading and writing
1 watching TV

Although the questionnaire did not reveal much difference in the ETM 3 members' philosophy of language learning, the analysis did.
On-chan, wrote that her language learning experience "has been starting from confusion to realization" and she has been positive about most of her language learning activities especially repetition, memorization and reading aloud. Eringo, on the other hand, wrote that she prefers reading silently to reading aloud and that reading aloud was not helpful to her.
John Wang wrote that for him listening and speaking has been most important in his English development while RIP claims that for him learning the rules of grammar has been most valuable.
Everyone is very convincing in their reasoning, but I wonder if we can find a middle ground.

Tasks 1 & 2: Talking about and Analyzing Our Language Learning Experiences

2006-04-28T16:17:00.000+09:00

Last week I asked students to write a post titled "How I learned English" where they briefly summarized their English learning experiences. A lot of students such as Napoti mentioned that the NHK English lessons were instrumental in their learning English. Pinch Hitter, whose dream always changes, writes that listening to CDs has been instrumental in his language learning. Fantasista talks about his junior high school and high school learning experience in a little depth.
This week I have asked students to analyze their learning experiences (See the assignment blog). First, I asked students to download and fill out the following questionnaire (Pennington, 1990, p.136) asking them about their language learning experiences. Then I asked them to answer the following questions on a new post titled "An Analysis of My Language Learning Experience":
1. My most enjoyable language learning experience has been….
2. My least enjoyable language learning activity has been …
3. My most valuable language learning activity has been …
4. My least valuable language learning activity has been ....
5. In general my language learning experience has been ....
6. What kind of influence do you think your language learning experience will have on your teaching?

Some students such as Happy Days have already written a post. I asked students to write their posts by May 9. Right now in Japan we are about to enter Golden Week which means that we will have no classes between May 3 and May 7. Yeah!

Source
Pennington, M.C. (1990). A professional development focus for the language teaching practicum. In Richards, J.C and D. Nunan. (Eds.), Second Language Teacher Education (pp.132-151). Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press.

About this Blogging Project

2006-04-20T19:49:00.000+09:00

Absract: A blogging project consisting of 25 aspiring English and primary school teachers at Iwate University. Come join us for discussion and debate! (April 20 - August 1, 2006)
Detail:This is a blogging project with my advisees and the learners in my English Teaching Methodologies 3 (ETM3) class. The members are 25 junior and senior undergraduate students as well as two graduate students. Some aspire to be elementary school teachers and some junior high school teachers.
We will be doing both group and individual blogging work and have three types of blogs: A group discussion blog, individual llearner blogs, and a blog to post assignments, resources or announcements.
The first blog is called "Issues in EFL in Japan". This blog will serve as a portal to the learners' blogs and summarize some of our hot topics of discussion as well as point out some interesting posts from learners' blogs. Every week, I or another learner will summarize the hot topics appearing in the learners' individual blogs and link to them. Sometimes this blog will also host discussions with English teachers inside and outside Japan. It is our aim for the reader of this blog to learn more about the state of English language teaching in Japan.
The second type of blog will simply serve as a bulletin board for assignments, relevant anouncements and class resources.
In the third type of blog or individual learner blogs(the blogroll is displayed on this blog and in this post), learners will reflect on their own teaching, what they have learned in ETM3 and their own theories about teaching English. They are also free to write about anything they want. The goals for the learners is to 1) Increase their understanding of English education and 2) Improve their English. I hope that you will come join us!

ETM3 Blogroll
34mihotch
74napochi
Bear or Toshi?
Cheesecake
chocolate-ice-cream
Elle
Eringo
Fantasista
gakusei
happy days
head banger
JohnWang
Mame
Mibora
minusuke
Nyanmage
On-chan
patapata
Pinch Hitter
rip
the loe
The lion
yoshie hb

Advisees' Blogs
Cube
Gami
Minomoni
Monchichi
Olive

Jamie Hall's Personal Blog
http://discussenglish.blogspot.com/

Teachers' Employment Test in Japan

2006-04-19T18:56:00.000+09:00

Keywords: Teacher Employment, Japan
This year, Eri, Montiti, and Olive plan on taking the teacher's employment examination. Eri and Olive want to be elementary school teachers while Montiti aims to be a junior high school English teacher. The teacher's employment examination in Japan is extremely difficult to pass. My (very rough) estimate is that only about 20% of the applicants pass the test every year. This week Montiti and Olive blogged about what they have to do to prepare for the test. A post about this subject from Eri will be coming in the near future.

Comparing Teaching English in Thailand and Japan (Revisted)

2006-04-19T18:45:00.000+09:00

Keywords: English teaching in Thailand, Japan
A few months ago in my personal blog I talked about some of the differences between teaching English in Thailand and Japan based on my 1 week teaching experience at a Thai secondary school in Ayutthaya with Eri and Olive. Last month Cube also went to the same school to teach English for two weeks, and she wrote about her experience on her blog. If you are interested in learning about some of the differences that Cube, Eri, and Olive noticed between Thai and Japanese secondary schools, please see their blogs.

Reading Silently vs. Following Along

2005-12-09T01:37:00.000+09:00

Keywords: Reading Silently, EFL Reading
We are going to ask you to read a text about different and somewhat sensational treatments in alternative medicine. Please read the directions and then do part1 and part2. When you have finished, please answer the question at the ending. Please write your answer as a comment to this post.
Part I: Read the first part of the text to yourself. While you are reading, try to think of the answer to the following questions:

Where in the West are alternative medicines particulary popular?
What is a colonic?

TEXT:Would you let someone massage your face with a very sharp knife just to lose a few pounds?　Or how about press the inside of your mouth with a frozen piece of metal to improve brain function? Would you have salt water pumped through one nostril and out the other to treat a head code? Although these therapies may sound a little shocking, more and more people are paying large amounts of money for the health benefits they promise.Alternative therapies and medicines are becoming popular everywhere, but especially so on the west coast of the United States. Californians are known for their enthusiasm for new trend in health or beauty. So it is not surprising that they are rushing to their therapists’ office to have their colons cleaned. The colon-enema, or colonic, works by pumping five to ten gallons of warm water mixed with coffee through the colon. The water flushes out hardened waste and bacteria, leaving the colon clean and healthy. Enthusiasts claim that a colonic makes their skin look younger, improves sexual functions, and gives an overall feeling of good health. Although the colonic is a relatively new treatment in the West, it has been used safety for centuries in China and other countries in the East. In fact, in part of Russia, patients are given a colonic immediately upon checking into a hospital. Answers to the questions in Part I:

Part II:
Please follow along while we read the text. While you read and listen to the text, try to think of the answer to the following questions.

What does Eastern medicine generally focus on and what does Western medicine generally focus on?
What should you do before spending your money on the latest treatment in alternative medicine?

Please click on the link here to listen to the text. After clicking on the link, if you receive a download window, click "open" and wait for your computer to open the sound file (It might take a couple of minutes.) Make sure to read the text while you listen to it. If the sound file automatically opens in a new window, make sure to view this page so you can read the text while you listen:(V)o￥o(V)

TEXT: Another popular therapy is fasting. People who fast check themselves into a fasting clinic and have nothing but water for seven to ten days. They claim that fasting cleans and energies the entire body. Some even claim that fasting can cure serious diseases. The “grape fast,” which involves eating nothing but dark grapes for seven days, is used widely in Russia as part of a treatment program for cancer.Alternative therapies such as these are finally gaining acceptance in the mainstream medical establishment. Several American universities, including the Harvard School of Medicine, offer courses and degrees in alternative therapies, herbal medicines, and nutritional therapy.The more progressive schools teach what is called “The New Medicine.” This is a combination of Eastern and Western medical practices.The Eastern side of “The New Medicine” focuses on prevention and treating the causes of disease. The Western side focuses on symptoms and pain.Skeptics, however, remind us that many alternative and new therapies have never been thoroughly tested. Some treatments are not as effective as promised. And some are even dangerous. Some herbal medicines, widely believed to be safe, can even be deadly if not used properly. Before spending your money on the latest treatment, consult your doctor and do a little research. So how about it? A colonic, anyone?

Answer to Comprehension Questions for Part II
Question: Was it easier for you to understand the text reading on your own or was it easier for you to understand the text following along while someone else read it? Why? Please write your answer as a comment to this post. This text was taken from Charles M .Knudsen (2003) . STRANGER THAN FICTION.NAN ' UN - DO, p.14