Writing Seminar at Temple Uni @ Tokyo

Two weeks ago, I attended a seminar about "Multilingual Writing Development: Current Research and Practice" by Dr. Carol Rinnert (Hiroshima City University) .


It was great experience to me to get the atmosphere of American universities and test my English skills whether I'm qualified enough to understand the class in English. Dr Carol's English was very clear and I could understand. 


As a very beginner of  TESOL, the every detail was meaningful to me, like the difference between EFL and ESL.


In my understanding, her research was about how the second and third language affect to mother language writing skills. People who speak second language has some kind of influence on your mother language. These are proved by several research so far, so she did similar research on writing. 


The study was in progress, so there were no results or statement yet, but sharing the process is very fresh to me and I get very excited to be part of one listener. It will be need more time to get to know all of the study, but I want to know and want to be a teacher someday.


 This day gave me big step to my future. Thank you!  

たまらない

I woke up with the news about Ichiro moving to Yankees from Seattle Mariners. The program on TV was Sukkiri (スッキリ！).  The news it self wasn't big surprise for me, in fact I'm not enthusiastic about baseball.

Ichiro was taking an interview telling his feelings and hopes. The interesting part is that he has game against Mariners right after this interview. Of course he would be in a game as a Yankees player. Everybody were expressing how exciting that will be and the program were already done with the street interview in Tokyo.

What has got to do with me to write this news in here? That is the word, the caster　(極楽とんぼの加藤) said right after telling Ichiro would play as an Yankees, then how would Mariners fans think about that. He expressed it as "Tamaranai deshou ne." 「たまらないでしょうね」。

As I heard that word, I couldn't translate to English, because he didn't tell the detail of the feeling. Maybe we are supposed to receive it by the air. You know, Kuki wo yomu (空気を読む). But it should be told in more direct way in order to work as a news program.  I know it's a personal traits of natural Japanese, and I do that some time too. But I thought this word could be one of good example. So I wanted to note it here.

According to Eijiro （英辞朗）、Tamaranai (たまらない) means;

 

• can't resist〔ひどく魅力的で〕

• be very devil

【形】

1. great〈話〉

1. maddening

1. perishing〔強調〕

【自動】

ache（～したくて）

• たまらない
ほど

【副】

killingly

First of all, I was surprised to see たまらない　in the dictionary. However, in my opinion, these case above are pretty rough to express the exact meaning of Japanese nuance.

There are so many world like this. I learned it by making a book expressing Japan in English. It was very hard work to translate 妙な　（another difficult word for English） details in Japanese.

I will keep posting here when I found more the words like these.