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",

Hi, everyone. This is an e-news letter for the last class on 30th March. I will briefly describe the activities in the class and make small notes of what appeared remarkable to me.

We did three things in the class.

Firstly, we did the correction of the last e-news letter written by Yasu-san. There, Yasu-san detailed the process of Monopoly we played in the class. I thought it amazing that he could represent the process so meticulously, none of which I could recall (perhaps I did not know what was going on, even when I was playing!).

Thanks to Takasu-san, we now have a google group. Please check it out!

http://groups.google.co.jp/group/english-foractvists?hl=ja

Women Group against sexual discrimination by governor & politician
April, 2009 Sumiko T

The beginning
In November 2001, the Governor of Tokyo, ISHIHARA Shintaro、made the following comment in a weekly women’s magazine.

“He(Tokyo university professor) says it is both wasteful and sinful for women to live beyond menopause, because while men can father children into their 80s or 90s, women lose their reproductive powers after menopause. He says such useless human beings are extremely harmful to the whole planet”

Hallo, everyone.　

This is Tsuruta writing, and my "Writing practice"

Please forgive me, becouse, I disturb you, and you have read such a broken English unfoutunetly.

By the way, my Japanese blog is "kyou, kangaeta koto"("That I think, today")
http://tu-ta.at.webry.info/

If you have enough time, Please read this, without expect. (^L^;)

とりあえず、スペルチェックなしで書き込みます。したら、すごいことになりそう。

何か、もう少し内容のあることを書いてみたかったのですが、難しいです。

(See the larger image here.)

On March 10th, we reviewed our work in the first two classes, then I asked people to look at our notes from the last class and "find the treasure" in them, the thing that is most interesting, or important. Pamela King, a teacher I worked with at LaGuardia Community College, used this idea of finding the treasure when she was reading young people's writing. (For teachers, it's like "text rendering" but using the term treasure gives it a kind of focus or interest.)

I asked groups to brainstorm things that tell us there is an economic crisis, using the SEE, HEAR, and FEEL activity from Educating for a Change. Here is what the groups wrote. What stands out to you? What is most interesting or important?

We know there is an economic crisis when we HEAR:

On the news:
• that Lehmann Brothers went bankrupt,
• that many temp workers were/are getting fired
• that stock prices went/goes down dramatically
• that suicide rate increased for the last six months

In the January 9th Yokohama class we wrote this poem:

We wish the people of Gaza:
the smell of books in a quiet library,
the sound of happy drumming at the harvest festival,
the sight of the original landscape,
the taste of delicious food on the family table,
the touch of cloth like a soft feather.

We wish the people of Gaza
peace.

[This is a corrected version of Maeda-san's presentation about her upcoming trip to Nova Scotia. Good luck on your trip! Please blog about what you see and learn! -- Matt]

Introduction

Hello, everyone.
Thank you giving me time to make this presentation.
Before my presentation, let me introduce myself again.

My name is Kaoru Maeda.
I have been an elected member of the Koto Ward assembly since last year.

I am going to visit Nova-Scotia in Canada from July 29th to August 5th. It is a study tour to learn about their waste/resource management policy.

I took material from the revisions and combined it make one piece. You can see the first version by clicking on "Revisions" above. What do you think? - Matt

English for Activists class
「About Rutsuko san」
　　　　　　　　　2008/6/16
Rutsuko Shoji is a member of the EFA class in Tokyo. Her daughter is a famous harpist in France.

Rutsuko's name comes from Bible. She is a Christian. She has been an activist since she was young.