English for Activists

Dear All,

Hello. I hope you are well there.
I'm sorry to delay delivering E-news letter.

We had a class on Apr. 6th 2010, we did four activities.

1) Correction
We corrected Seika's E-newsletter which delivered last week.
It was almost perfect, but there are some uncommon phrases for native speakers,
we interchanged some words common expression.

2 )Discussion about the new meeting room
We have to find the new meeting room, which is used, from May 11th,
we discussed about it.
Some people propose some places.
For example, "Yotsuya Hiroba", "YWCA", "Cafe Renoir",

From Yasu-san:

Good evening everybody ! I try to write my home work.

Learning Plan of 3/23
Practice making the sounds and rhythms of English -- It had not done.
Talking about some topics and news -- May be it had not done, too.
Play monopoly -- So good!
Write a short report for the EFA e-newsletter -- Too severe for me, but is fun for me.

Go to dinner and drink -- It warmed up. We wanted to talk each other, but we must roll dice in class, so at tha restaulant we talked and talked, I think.

Hi everyone,
Here is the report of the EFA class on March 13th.

1) Memorizing the members' names
12 people got together including new members. So at first, we repeated each
member's name one by one, and memorized them.

2) Chanting in English.
"Education under attack" "What do you do?" "Stand up! Fight back!"
The key point was to shorten between "do?" and "Stand", like "What do you
dostand up! Fight back"

3) Know each other
In order to know each member's interest and to find out who have the similar
interest of his own, we exchanged own ideas with each other.

SUMMARY/NOTES on planning discussion (from March 9, 2010 class)

Top objectives: Communicate with foreign activists, Participate in discussions at conferences (in English), Learn about people's activism

Our end is to communicate to foreign activists, not ordinary people, about political issues and labor movements and social movements. It's better we can invite some activists from foreign countries but it's a little bit difficult. Instead we can talk about current topics in the class. If we can, we want to debate some issues.

This the the text before corrections by Daisuke, Rie and Shige:

Hakenmura (Toshikoshi hakenmura, "Tent City") was a camp at Hibiya Park, from Dec. 31 2008 to Jan. 5 2009. About 500 people, various ages, from various cities, came to stay there for wormth and foods and beds. Because they lost their job, home, and entire fortune. But they couldn't depend on anyone. Almost of them were temporary workers. They were trembling from cold and hunger.

After corrections:

In class we worked on texts written by participants. One group worked on Sumiko Takaki's report back from the CEDAW meeting in New York.

This is the text before corrections by Keiko, Sumiko and Rutsuko:

1. On the '70th, Women Liberation movement was very aggressive all over the world. In those background, United Nation adopted 'Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women' on 1979.
Japanese Government ratified the treaty on 1985 by pushing Women movement.

This piece by Juan Williams summarizes the history of the game Monopoly (aka the Landlord Game) and has good links to other stories.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/monopoly/

I posted videos and lyrics for several videos we have seen in the Tokyo EFA class, including Dance with Me, by Orleans; Johnny B. Goode, by Chuck Berry; and Allentown, by Billy Joel.

Each one gives you a good chance to practice at home: listen to the song and sing along -- the lyrics are posted below the video.

Dance with me, I want to be your partner.
Can't you see the music is just starting?
Night is calling, and I am falling.
Dance with me.

Fantasy could never be so thrilling.

Johnny B. Goode, by Chuck Berry

Deep down in Louisianna
close to New Orleans,
way back up in the woods
among the evergreens,
there stood a log cabin