What's New at Kyoto NHK ESS?

Genre: Game

Title: Team Game Competition

Presenter: Ms. Nakano

Discription:
I'm planing to hold a team game competition. I'd like to give 3 kinds of games below. All the games are easy to play.
1:Shiritoti
2:Quick gessing game
3:Crossword puzzle
You have to make good teams and compete with other teams.
Please come to OTERA and enjoy playing games in Englsh!

Genre: Vocabulary Game

Title: Play with Acronyms.

Presenter: Mr. Oku

Description:
Our surrounding is flooded with numerous acronyms, namely, a chain of alphabetic characters as the abbreviation of names and long words such as NHK-ESS. Indeed, they provide conventional tools for easy writing and communication among average people. On the other hand, for some people who do not know the original meaning, acronyms are nothing but strange signs and jargons, sounding nonsense and discriminative.
If so, instead of keeping away from them, let’s play on acronyms with your wits and tickling jokes and give them different meanings.
As a consequence of this game, I hope that we will become more careful and thoughtful when we use kind of cryptographic words as acronyms, slang and IT terms among the public.
　　
Processes in the Group Session (four people each):
1) Lists of known acronyms are shown below with original meanings. They are classified into four categories. You may add some new ones to the list if you want (3 min only in the beginning). Now, you start from any category.

2) In each category, everyone must choose a favorite acronym and work individually to give a new meaning on it with wits and jokes. If necessary, prepositions, conjunctions and the least number of noun or verb can be used (8 min).

3) After 8 min, show your work-out pieces to the group, discuss and correct to refine them (7 min).

4) Proceed to the second category and so on (15 min x 4 categories = 60 min).

5) After 60 min, select 3 unique answers of the group out of four categories (5 min).

Process in the General Class Session:
6) Presentation of the group’s best answers with explanation, if necessary (3 min x 5 groups = 15 min).

Acronyms and Original Names examples of jokes
Examples:
IAL Icelandic AirLine I am always late (known)
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization No action talk only (known)
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Group 1. CompanyNames
JAL Japan AirLine; ANA All Nippon Airways; JAS Japan Air System;
UA United Airline; NW Northwest Airline; AA American Airline;
TWA Trans World Airline; LH Lufthanza; BA British Airways;
EMS Express Mail Service;
SONY; TBS; TOYOTA; VW; GE; GM; JR; JT; JRA;
NTT; KDDI; MAC; NOVA (not nova);

Group 2. Government Organizations
PKO Peace-Keeping Operation; ISAF International Security Allied Force;
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees;
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization;
WTO World Trade Organization; ISO International Organization for Standardization;
FBI Federal Bureau of Inspection; CIA Central Intelligence Agency;
NSF National Science Foundation; NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration;

Group 3. Social System, Institution, Science and Technology
JIS Japanese Industrial Standards; NPO Non-Profit Organization;
NGO Non-Governmental Organization; NHK Nippon Hoso Kyokai;
ESS English Speaking Society; GPS Global Positioning System;
LSI Large-Scale Integrated circuit; NMR Nuclear Magnetic Resonance;
TOPIX Tokyo Stock Price Index; UCLA; SUNY; MIT; IIT; ICU; TITECH, KIT, RITZ, etc.

Group 4. Health, Life, Environment
SARS Serious Aspiration Retardant Symptom
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
LSD lysergic acid diethylamide; EPA eicosa-pentaenoic acid;
DHA docosa-hexaenoic acid; NIH National Institutes of Health;
WHO World health Organization; MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging;
PET Positive Electron Tomography; LDK Living Dining-Kitchen;
DV Domestic Violence;
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;
UNEP United Nations Environment Program; EPA Environmental Protection Agency
WMO World Meteorological Organization; GSC Green Sustainable Chemistry;
LCA Life Cycle Assessment

Group’s Selected Answers:
1)

2)

3)

4)

Genre: Talk

Title: “Pearls of Wisdom about our Daily Lives”

Presenter: Mr. Kajita

Description:

In this practice, I am going to take up useful tricks (“Urawaza” or “Hiketsu”) in our daily lives. I will prepare the “List” of topics relating to our daily lives and the “Cards” showing the example of the trick corresponding to each topic.

This practice will be conducted as follows.

1) I will divide all the participants into 4 or 5 groups.

2) In each group, one of the group members will distribute the same number of the Cards to the other members.

3) Choose a topic from the List and guess the trick with group members. You can't check the example on the Cards at this time.

4) After the guess, one of the members who has the Card corresponding to the topic explains the example of trick to the other members in English. (The examples are written in Japanese.)

5) If you have comments on the example, you can state it freely.

6) The above steps from 3) to 5) will be repeated.

Ｇｅｎｒｅ: Speaking

Title: "Instant English Composition and discussion"

Presenter: Ms. Mizuno

Description:

Topics to be discussed
1.Medical treatments
2.Work
3.Education
4.Charity
5.Food-related issues
6.The impact of Technology

We are going to practice instant English composition using Main Language phrases. You can discuss things related to the pictures attached on three sheets of paper. However, you don't have to stick to them.

I hope you will find this activity enjoyable and learn English fruitfully.

Genre: Game

Title: "Let's make the map"

Presenter: Mr. Takai

Discription:
4 people say about their lives in this town. So you make the town map with using their talking.

This game is that you make the map from some hints(map's information) with team menbers.
Some hints are written in some papers but you have only one paper.
Inportant is "Don't show your hints to team menbers. (Sharing hints is the way to talk only)"

Genre:Translating and discussion

Title:Translating and discussing news stories

Presenter: Mr. Higashiyama

Description
First you are devivded into several groups. Each group are given cards with different news stories written in Japanese. You are not allowed to read them at this point. You have to keep them face down. And then you take turn to pick up one card at a time ,read and put it into English or paraphrase it After confirming that other group members fully understand the news story, there is a discussion on it. I hope you are expected to work on as many news stories as possible. Thank you.

Presenter: Ms. Oka

Ｅａｓｙ　Ｂｉｎｇｏ　Ｇａｍｅ

ＢＩＮＧＯ game sheets are usually filled with numbers. And numbers are read out, then you check the numbers.
But this time, instead of numbers, you are supposed to fill in the blanks with words on the BINGO sheet. And we, one by one, are to explain the meaning of the word and let other members guess the word. If you have the same word on your sheet, you can circle the word. We proceed the game this way and try to make BINGO lines as much as possible. I hope everyone can enjoy it!

Presenter: Mr. morino

Genre: Composition exercises

Title: American Jokes

Description:
Do you like jokes? Why American jokes are not so funny for Japanese?
Some American jokes are difficult to understand as their punch lines
are different from those of Japanese jokes.
In this practice, you will read a variety of American jokes, discuss
what's funny about them with your group members and try to compose
American jokes and afterwards present them.

Presenter：　Mr. Matsuura

Ｇｅｎｒｅ:Listening

Description:
Let us listen to the songs by the Beatles.
I will pick up unpopular but excellent tunes.
I hope everyone can enjoy it!

Presenter：Mr. Fujino

Genre : Discussion
Title : How do you stay healthy ?

Description :
The first age-group of Dankai Generation starts on retirement under the age limit in this year.

They will have to continue to live for twenty years after that to be eighty years old
that they have the span of average life in case of men.

So are you also gonna do particularly something to live to be eighty years old one by one
because of you and your family ?

Please would you have a hot discussion about this theme each other on the spot of Practice ?

So let's practise and give advice each other
and take an opportunity to spend your happy life from this minute on.

Please take part in a discussion as many as possible.

Thank you.

Presenter：Mr. Tabata

Genre: Talk

Title: Superstition and jinx

Description:

There are so many superstitions (beliefs that events are influenced by specific behaviors, without having a causal relationship ) like “ Don’t cut your nail at night ”or “Don’t whistle at night ”. Do you believe them?

In this practice, we are going to talk about superstition and jinx. Ｉwill prepare several examples of them and would like you to tell your own jinx or lucky charms (omajinai).

I hope you will enjoy the practice.

Presenter： Ms. Miyagawa

genre:talk

title:Can you talk about KYOTO in english??

discliption:

In this practice, you will get into a conducter and
introduce KYOTO or your hometown( history, sightseeing
spot, your favorite place etc...) to your group members.
I'm going to prepare some materials which can help your
discussion.