9/26 arw

            It is always important to learn cultures when we want to start business in other countries. The discussion we did in the class was interesting. It helps me realize how little I know about culture. It was interesting to know the effects of cultures to the people’s way of thinking.

9/24

I know that I have to decide my essay topic as soon as possible, but I have not decided it yet. I want to write something that I really interested in. However, the most difficult thing is that I have to make it as an academic topic. It was interesting to know everyone’s topics. It seems that many people are going to write about culture.

ARW in ILC

            In this class, I learned some useful websites for our essay. Those websites told me how many academic words I used in my essay and the level of my essay. The academic words that I used for the essay from last semester were less than I expected, so I decided to use more academic words and make the level of my essay higher. I also realized that how many functions that goggle has. I used to use only g mail and g drive, so I will try start using goggle calendar and task.

            Now it is a time for me to think about the new academic topic for my essay. Many of the topics that I came up with are still not academic enough. I hope I can find something suitable for my topic.

Bakayama

            It was my first time to have a class on Bakayama. I enjoyed having a class outside. I did not feel sleepy at all just because we were outside. We discussed about stumbling blocks that we would face in foreign countries. I could also see how everyone improved his or her English speaking skills during their summer vacations. We shared information about some negative gestures in different cultures and some problems that we had in other countries. 

Barna

It was my first time to know about 3B, Background, Biography and Bias. When I started reading, I was not doing any research about the author or the book. I just read them. However, I could realize the importance of 3B in this class. Most of the readings are often affected a lot from the experiences of the authors. That is why it will be more interesting to learn the histories of the authors. Each of us in my group did the different research about Barna and her article about intercultural communication. There was a lot of information on the Internet, so it made me harder select the best information for our research.

I really enjoyed the quiz that we did about the nine circles. It also made me think about my imagination and creation. I did not come up with any good answers for the quiz, which means that I was limiting my way of thinking unconsciously. Maybe I should start thinking everything wider and deeper using my imagination.

9/10

            I read the Great Gatsby during this summer and I introduced the content of it in class. It was not the first time for us to present something in front of the audience, but I still felt a little nervous. I quite enjoyed everyone’s presentations in my group. All of us read different books, so it was interesting to know the reason why they chose that books. I could see each of us has different interests and favorites. Moreover, when we performed our presentations to each other, we could find the good points and bad points of us. For example, we learned not to touch our hair and fold our hands during presentations. We often do these things unconsciously, so it is important that we have somebody to check.

            I knew that even if I feel nervous, if I pretend to be confident about my presentation, everyone would not notice that I am feeling nervous. I also heard that if I make a big smile on my face for about two minutes before the presentation, I could be more relaxed during my presentation. There are also some other strategies that I know in order to perform our presentation better, but I think that the best way to do good presentations is to have a lot of experiences to speak in front of people and get used to it.