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1. What prompted you decide to participate in the “JSPS Science Dialogue” program?
I seldom have an occasion to present my research to persons who are not specialists in the domain, and also
I have never taught to students. I took this occasion to present rather philosophical concerns about my
research: how does it relate to other scientific domains? how is my research useful to society? etc. Because
this was an occasion to talk about such questions, I was happy to participate in this seminar.
2. To what did you give greatest attention in preparing and giving the lecture?
I have tried to prepare a talk that lengthed about 25 minutes when presented "normally" to English-speaking
people, although I had a 50 minutes slot, since I had to ask my host researcher to regularly translate parts of
my talk while presenting. In addition, I paid much attention to the level of complexity of my talk: I have used
metaphors, pictures, animations, funny examples, etc. to help students understand.
3. Did you find it difficult to give a lecture in English to Japanese students? Could you give some advice to future lecturers on how to facilitate communication with Japanese students?
Actually, students were quite fluent in English. I had no real problem for communicating in English. My
assisting host researcher was however very useful for rephrasing my talk in an easier way and in Japanese.
However, I advise future participants to prepare and send in advance easy-to-read documents to be used as
direct supports for the talks and discussions: glossaries, slides for the discussion, etc. This would make it
easier for students to prepare questions and to follow the talk and discussions. Research articles are too
difficult as support documents for high-school students, unless it is only 2 or 3 pages.
If the main document is longer, it should be accompanied by a shorter summary document in English, 2 or 3
pages long, with many pictures and examples, and written in an easy "Japanese style", i.e. with very short
paragraphs containing maximum 3 sentences each.
4. Could you give your impression with regard to participating in this program?
I was first impressed by the formal atmosphere in the high school: students bowing, uniforms... But then I
was surprised by the curiosity of students, and their good level of English. In addition, this seminar was a good
occasion to talk with other post-doctoral researchers, and to share our different experiences of living and
researching in Japan. Also, we were very well welcomed by the Takasaki High-School teachers. This was
therefore a very nice experience.
5. Was it meaningful in terms of your fellowship activities?
This kind of talk is "refreshing": it allowed me to do a checkpoint of my current research, and to present my
personal motivation to do research and the philosophy of my research domain (software engineering and
systems management). In addition, trying to motivate other people to do research was re-motivating for doing
research myself.
6. In what ways do you think the students benefited from the program?
I think that the two objectives of the camp were met: 1) promote science and 2) practice English. Particularly,
it was a good occasion for students to practice English with non-Japanese people with different accents. It was
a good occasion for them to make presentations in English, and to talk in public.
7. Could you give some overall advice or comments to future participants in the program?
Getting attention from students was not an issue: the students were attentive and reactive. Also, their level of
English was surprisingly good for both writing and speaking. So English was not really an issue.
My experience of practical exercises with students during the discussion session (in my case, using
computers and the Internet) was apparently successful. It made it easier to interact with students. So I advise
future participants to prepare such practical exercises. However, I found out that I was short of time to do all
exercises I planned: 2 hours instead of 1:30 would have been better in my case.
In addition, I advise to make a talk and a discussion session on the same subject, to make it simpler for
students. I personally made the mistake of discussing on another domain than my talk, which I believe was a
little confusing for students.
Bringing concrete objects for the talks/discussions (e.g. chips, to present nano-technology, or network cables,
to discuss about networks), or promotional material to give away (e.g. CDROMs with free software on them),
also proved to be a good idea.
My last piece of advice is: you should prepare your 5-minutes talk for the closing ceremony in advance,
before coming to the high-school !
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