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1. What prompted you decide to participate in the "JSPS Science Dialogue" program?
I like teaching very much and I already have a teaching experience in French High school as well as in French universities. I was very interested to have also an experience in Japanese High school, even if it was only for a short time.
2. To what did you give greatest attention in preparing and giving the lecture?
Preparing the lecture, I took care of going back to the basics of the science that is involved in my research, so that I could bring the students slowly to the most complicated part with increasing difficulty. I discussed with Japanese university students in my lab about chemistry and physics in high school and I had a quick look at their books and notebooks from High school so that I could understand better what was the level of high school students (even if I didn't understand enough Japanese, many parts can be recognized). I designed a short demonstration using samples from my research in the hope to interest students more. Finally I reviewed the vocabulary I used and try to avoid uncommon words that I replaced by synonyms if possible.
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?
I tried to make the slides of the presentation as "visual" as possible, with animations, so that the students could understand as much as possible without my speech. In addition, I did an introduction of my country and made a short comparison of high schools in France and Japan that may have helped to get their attention in the beginning. In the final stage of preparation, after identifying a few important scientific words (about a dozen) that could be difficult in English, a student of my lab helped me by doing a translation so I could put it on some of the slides. On her side, the science teacher of the class prepared a document about the most important technical terms in the lecture. In spite of this I cannot say if the communication between us was really optimal, as I am concerned that I spoke involuntarily very fast, making the speech much harder to understand for the students.
4. Could you give your impression with regard to participating in this program?
I was very happy to participate in this program, and now that I have prepared a presentation adapted for students (I hope), I would even be glad to show it another time in another High school!
5. Was it meaningful in terms of your fellowship activities?
I think it is meaningful in a more general way, I my opinion, there should be more contact between researchers and high schools to help motivate students and maybe also to explain what kind of career research is.
6. In what ways do you think the students benefited from the program?
I hope they understood both a little about my research and also about a researcher's life. One key point of the lecture was to show that sciences like biology, chemistry and physics had no boundaries and interesting research could come out of combining them.
7. Could you give some overall advice or comments to future participants in the program?
I would advise them to do their best to make research fun and accessible to students, to make contact with the teachers before the lecture to help preparing the students in advance, and finally, to speak as clearly and slowly as possible.
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