|
1. What prompted you decide to participate in the "JSPS Science Dialogue" program?
Two major facts: first, JSPS is funding my studies in Japan, and I think that giving 3 days ( 2 days to prepare the lecture and one to present it) is a small service to give back. I'm glad I could be helpful about that. The second was curiosity for Japanese school system and the opportunity to discuss chemistry with students.
2. To what did you give greatest attention in preparing and giving the lecture?
Before preparing the lecture, I asked the professor responsible of it, at Japan Woman's University High School, the level of students in English and Science ( for me, Chemistry). I then tried to adjust the content of the lecture in English and Science. (ie: quite basic level, with a little well-explained complex things).I also contacted one of my friend, another JSPS fellow who participate to this science dialog program ( D. Lemin @ Chiba University) for comments and feedback.
For giving the lecture, I just tried to speak the slowest and the clearest I can in English, to make sure that a maximum number of students understand. I was also helped by one of my Japanese colleague ( Okano-san) who translated each slide key-point into Japanese. [more in #3]
3. Did you find it difficult to give a lecture in English to Japanese students?
Giving a lecture in English to Japanese students is not hard for me: I'm just talking and giving a regular lecture... the hard part is for students to understand English, and especially Scientific English. They might know some English ( their teacher told me " about TOIEC 500"), and they might know a little about Science, but they surely don't know about Science in English or Scientific English. Grammar is the same, but all the vocabulary is missing. Mr Okano's translation in Japanese of my talk and slides was I think quite necessary, and I hope, useful for the students.
3b. Could you give some advice to future lecturers on how to facilitate communication with Japanese students?
Evaluate student's level in English and Science, have your slide subtitled/translated in Japanese, and come with a good colleague to help you with Japanese language except if you are yourself completely fluent in Japanese. Giving the slides handout some times before may also be useful, so that the science and English teacher could use it as a working material and translate it before the talk or explain the science contained in it, but in this case, the work load is supported by teachers...
4. Could you give your impression with regard to participating in this program?
Interesting. On a cultural point of view, much more than on a scientific one.
5. Was it meaningful in terms of your fellowship activities?
Not at all. My fellowship activities include research in a laboratory. Going away of his laboratory just slows down my research.
On a cultural, communication and human point of view, this is quite interesting, because it's explaining my work to people with 2 barriers: the language barrier and the scientific one. Dealing with this two at the same time is a little hard, but interesting.
6. In what ways do you think the students benefited from the program?
I don't know. When I talked with the science professor which attend this lecture, she said that it was some kind of mixed "English and Science" lesson to them. Maybe one or two of them were really interested in this and maybe a little curiosity for the main part of the group. I hope I gave them a broader view about what is science and how we're doing research, on my specific field, but I don't know about that. Please read the student feedback forms and tell me.
7. Could you give some overall advice or comments to future participants in the program?
Doing the lecture in English and Japanese seems needed for this age group (High School Students). Maybe target older students (Undergrad/ 1st year university), but if your aim is promoting science before university, this is useless.
Maybe doing more than one lecture per fellow could be useful (improving over time, improving from mistakes). Now, the system: one fellow/one lecture means that the fellow invest some time on a "one-time-only lecture", but it's easier to do again later. Maybe giving several lectures over the whole fellowship period would be nicer, as the show might be improved and upgraded, for both fellow and students interest.
Giving the handout before: might allow more understanding, but lest surprise and more work for teachers.
Showing the students some experiments might improve their interest, but is quite hard to set up (in chemistry, moving around Tokyo with harmful chemicals is not a good idea).
Allowing interested students to actually visit the laboratory could push their interest in science a little further.
For fellows, maybe use the introduction meeting to present them this science dialog and how to make it nice would be interesting.
|
