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1. What prompted you decide to participate in the "JSPS Science Dialogue" program?
Various reasons prompted me to participate in the JSPS Science Dialogue program. I thought participating in the JSPS Science Dialogue program would be a good opportunity to visit High School in Japan and give lecture to the students. By participating in the program, I can share my knowledge and experiences with other academic people and also other academic people have chance to know the activities of researchers. Moreover, this would be an opportunity for me to interact with people outside my profession, to understand the education systems in Japan, and also to broaden my understanding of cultural values in Japan.
2. To what did you give greatest attention in preparing and giving the lecture?
My main attention was how to design the presentation materials so that it will be informative and interesting to the students. While preparing the presentation materials, I gave more attention on the content of the lecture, interest of teachers and students at the school, volume of information to be presented on given time, make lecture simple and understandable to the students, and use of many pictures in the lecture to make it interesting. Initially, I was planning to present my research work only but when I consulted teachers at the school, they suggested me to combine some information about my country together with my research work so that students will be more interested on lecture. After the feedback from Schoolteachers, I prepared the lecture materials combing both country information and specific research work. Before starting the lecture, I encouraged students to ask many questions and also mentioned them not to worry about mistakes while asking questions in English. During the lecture, I presented things slowly so that students can understand it easily.
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 had an impression that Japanese students are rather shy in general and do not want to interact much with new persons, and this is particularly so with foreigners. And students are more reluctant to interact through English. In my case, however, teachers, in advance, trained students on how to ask questions in English and how to deal with lecturer. Moreover, I gave lecture very slowly and use more photos rather than text as lecture materials. This made my class very interesting and many students asked questions. Students’ English was very good and I was very impressed with number of questions they asked. Delivering lecture slowly, balancing general information and academic research work, making the presentation very simple, using pictures in presentation, explaining things in Japanese (with the help of host researchers and school teachers) if students do not understand things, and encouraging everyone to ask questions (either in English or in Japanese) are important means of facilitating better communication with students.
4. Could you give your impression with regard to participating in this program?
I feel very proud to participate in this program. This gave me an opportunity to interact with High School students and share my knowledge and experiences with them. Through this program, I had opportunity to visit countryside and also gained knowledge about education systems in Japan. Moreover, students got opportunity to learn some new information and broaden their knowledge horizon. This is a very useful program for both researchers and students at school and this program should be continued and if possible should be promoted in large scale.
5. Was it meaningful in terms of your fellowship activities?
There is no doubt that the program was useful in terms of my fellowship activities. I was able to present my research activities to the students and raise their awareness about my research activities. The participation gave me knowledge on how to prepare materials when presenting research results to different group of audience in the future. Moreover, I got comments and other useful information from students and teachers during interaction, which will be helpful for my future research activities.
6. In what ways do you think the students benefited from the program?
Students had opportunity to interact with foreigner researcher and learn various research activities that researchers are doing. This helped them to broaden their knowledge horizon by understanding the importance of researcher and its impact on people’s livelihood. Moreover, students have opportunity to learn many new things about foreign country. In addition, students got opportunity to practice English through interaction with foreign researcher and through asking questions.
7. Could you give some overall advice or comments to future participants in the program?
I found JSPS Science Dialogue program very useful. I truly enjoyed giving lectures to the High School students and interacting with them. Indeed, this is a good opportunity to have interaction with High School students in Japan. I found students and Schoolteachers very interested in different research activities of researchers in various fields. They are very interested to know the findings of research, and they truly appreciate and value the lecture from researchers. I suggest all JSPS fellows to participate in the program and share their research activities with other academic people. Besides sharing own research findings, fellow will learn many things by participating in the program.
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