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!).

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.

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 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/

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

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

Welcome to the new and continuing participants in the Tokyo English for Activists course! I look forward to working with you all, and learning with and from you. Please feel free to register on this website and start your blog. You can also watch videos and read the words, listen to poetry, get news from sources like Democracy Now! and much more.

Comments, questions and suggestions are welcome!

アクティビストのための英語講座申込みのみなさんへ（BCCで送ります）

開講が来週となりましたので、お申し込みのみなさんへご案内致します。

１）会場

会場は、お茶の水の明治大学駿河台キャンパス研究棟４階の第７会議室です。
http://www.meiji.ac.jp/koho/campus_guide/suruga/campus.html

高層のリバティタワーの裏の建物です。リバティタワーの正面から入り、左奥に進

Here are the lyrics, missing a few words. Can you fill them in?

Working Class Hero, by John Lennon

Allentown Lyrics
Artist(Band):Billy Joel

Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time