Afternoon Presentation Session -One

PRESENTATION SESSION ONE 12:30 - 13:30 Presentation Rooms B207-217, B302

12:30 - 12:55 B210 Yasushi MIYAZAKI, Kwansei Gakuin University

What do culture, commerce, and communication mean for persons with disabilities? Corpus-assisted discourse analysis for an English-language newspaper in Japan

This presentation aims to discuss the relation of culture, commerce, and communication, in two interdependent perspectives: Japanese and foreigners’ perspectives. As well as most mass media in Japan, English-language newspapers in Japan have considered disability as one of critical issues, particularly in the 21st century. The emergence of (inter) national policies for independence of persons with disabilities (PWDs) might have inspired such journalistic interests. As language use in English-language newspapers in Japan might have been constructed accordingly to the audience, the worldview accommodates the perspective of foreigners. If so, how does English-language newspaper in disability conceptualize disability with such unique perspective? This corpus-assisted study is going to answer this question. I gathered The Japan Times newspaper texts in the LexisNexis Academic database with the search term “disability” in the timeline beginning on January 2001 and ending on December 2016. The search found 201 articles. The corpus is constructed in the Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2014). I analyzed the discourse on three topics by re-searching texts with three terms: culture, business, and communication. In this presentation, I will discuss how these terms construct discourse on disability depicted in English-language newspaper in Japan.

12:30 - 12:55 B211 Ethan WONG, Nick YU, Shirley QIU, Mizuki ARIMA & Daniel TANG, Otemae University

Japan and China – exploring cosmopolitism through Positive Peace in the social media age

This presentation will explore Otemae University’s attempt to increase cosmopolitanism, with a focus on Japan vis-à-vis China. Students in our Peace Studies class have examined the main theories (realism, neoliberalism) of international relations, and found cosmopolitanism (constructivism/critical theory) noticeably neglected. At the same time, domestic environments in the respective countries have become increasingly intolerant and hostile. Traditional mass media is increasingly controlled and dominated with vitriol. Thus, we examine ways to achieve a genuine change of identity and relationship building, centring on the idea of Galtung’s Positive Peace. We identified one crucial fissure – World War II and how Japan approaches the issue and Chinese perceptions of this. We propose a real-life and virtual Peace Tour of institutions in Kansai that honestly and objectively deal with the issue, publicising our student-to-student interactions and visits. All information and ideas will be shared via social media platforms, such as Weibo (微博), WeChat, Twitter and Facebook. We understand it is a big challenge, but we undertake the task with Deng Xiao Ping’s famous saying, “crossing the river by feeling the stones” (摸着石头过河), with the goal of contributing to an East Asian Community.

12:30 - 13:30 B212 Jon DUJMOVICH, Keio University

Empathy: The forgotten skill

Empathy has the potential create a leap in learner confidence, motivation, and communicative capabilities, yet far too many language instructors do not pay adequate attention to this potential. When empathy is viewed as a skill that needs to be continuously developed and nurtured, instructors can then provide learners with another avenue for language and communicative competency to grow. The presenter will also provide examples and activities to develop empathy that have been used effectively in foreign language learning settings.

12:30 - 13:30 B214 Randall BOLLING, Family & Friends Project

Making a Different Kind of Travel Connections

Peace as a Global Language may not always be the easiest language to learn, but there is one school that consistently produces good results, the School of Travel. As Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”, and naturally, there is truth to the degree of understanding one can gain from travel, as St. Augustine suggests, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” For the past 4 years, Family & Friends Project has been offering opportunities for qualified teachers to travel to Nepal and engage with colleagues there, sharing ideas, learning about new cultures/ways of thinking, and finding commonalities. For the last 2 years we have teamed up with Teachers Helping Teachers, a Special Interest Group of the Japan Association of Language Teachers and the Nepal English Language Teachers Association to hold teacher development workshops in Nepal. This presentation will outline how we got started, what we have done in the last few years, and invite you to join us, for perhaps a new travel experience in February 2018.

12:30 - 12:55 B213 Bonny LIU, Kwansei Gakuin University

Comparison of Nigerian & Japanese culture using Hofstede's dimensions

Last year I did an interview with an overseas student who comes from Nigeria and has lived in Japan for a year. According to his words, I got a brief image on Nigerian culture. Then, I tried to combine the result of my interview and the investigation on Hofstede Dimensions, a framework for cross-cultural communication, developed by Geert Hofstede. The data of Hofstede Dimensions demonstrate the cultural differences between Japan and Nigeria from 6 aspects. Focusing on the 4 cultural parts, demonstrated by Hofstede Dimensions, including Power Distance, Individualism, Indulgence and Long Term Orientation, I try to do a cultural comparison between Nigeria and Japan. The purpose of my presentation is to show the cultural differences between the two countries, which usually are not so noticeable. I hope that through examining these differences, people will reconsider the two cultures from a different perspective. More importantly, I hope that it will help person who try to live in Japan as a foreigner understands the culture here, and treats their overseas life with a positive attitude.

12:30-12:55 B213 Mao MORIOKA Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

Different Culture Between America and Japan

Between two countries, there are so many differences such as whether they have merit system or not, manners when we have meals and so on. Today I’ll especially focus on differences in how parents contact with their babies and education after that. First one is how parents contact with their babies. In Japan, parents, especially mothers, are always together with their babies hugging, giving them milk. When babies cry, parents immediately come to them and try to meet their needs. Also we Japanese tend to sleep together with parents when children become up to 1 or 2. I think it’s too much to say that most parents in Japan are overprotective. On the other hand, in America, parents allow to be free at some degree for their babies. If babies are crying, parents don’t mind their crying and continue what they are doing. Of course, parents don’t sleep with their babies even if how young they are, in fact, which was very surprised for me when I went to homestay in America. As a result, I could conclude that people in America are independent from their small childhood. Second one is differences in education. That is people in Japan don’t be educated to say their opinions, so they tend to follow majorities. However, people in America say their own opinion strongly. To see their school’s classes, it seems that it’s important to speak in person. In their home, this skill is demanded. In fact, once a week, Christians go to the church and debate with one another about the Holy Bible. It seems that those two are related with each other. Put simply, Japanese children are protected by parents, and parents decide everything so babies don’t need to think anything and just follow their parents during their young childhood. But, American children are free to do, so need to think what they do next. I can’t say which one is good for them, but that’s the differences I am most interesting.

12:30 - 12:55 B215 Peter MALLETT & Kao OGINO, Kobe Shoin University

Kobe Shoin Japan-Cambodia Project: Connecting, Communicating and Helping

The Kobe Shoin Japan-Cambodia Project was established in 2002 to promote cultural exchange between Cambodia and Japan amongst students, and to assist in educational projects amongst the poor in Cambodia. Each year Speech Contest winners from Kobe Shoin Women’s University go to Cambodia, all-expenses paid. The winner of a similar contest in Cambodia is received here in Japan, for two weeks, in December each year. Within this presentation the origins, aims and workings of the Cambodia Project will first be explained by the project originator, Mallett. 2017 poster contest winner Ogino then offers us a student perspective, describing the contest itself, explaining her winning entry, and offering thoughts on various aspects of the recent visit to Cambodia.

12:30 - 12:55 B216 Tomohiro KONO, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

What is Important in Communication?

In this presentation, I am going to write about what is important in each skill, being based on my own experience. I think that one of the most significant elements of verbal skills is to try to talk in the language which your companion speaks mostly. When I visited the Philippines, I talked mainly in English. Since English is not the mother tongue for Pilipino, it didn’t attract people’s concern. They saw me just a foreigner. On the other hand, when I tried to speak in Tagalog language, they changed their face milder. They saw me not just a foreigner, but rather a kaibigan (friend).

In my opinion, facial expressions play an essential role when it comes to communication. For, facial expressions are universal way to show your feelings. Because of the honesty of them, people are able to interpret to some extent. Then they can decide proper words to tell, according to their interpretation. For example, before breakout of fighting among my Pilipino friends, I noticed that something bad was going on, even though I totally didn’t understand what they were saying. Therefore, trying to talking in different mother tongue and facial expressions are important in terms of communication.

12:30 - 12:55 B216 Rina KIKUCHI, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

What is important for the intercultural understanding?

Recently, the concept of intercultural understanding is focused on by people all over the world to make a part of the Bridges to Peace. Many people think that intercultural understanding is to recognize and accept other different cultures, however I think it is also important to know our own cultures before understanding other ones. In this fall, I made friends with foreign students in university. When we did self-introduction, I was overwhelmed with the questions about Japanese culture. That’s why I didn’t really know Japanese culture as much as I can explain to someone. I was very shocked because I have lived in Japan over fifteen years and I thought I was very familiar with Japanese culture. I learned that if I don’t have enough knowledge about Japanese culture, my culture won’t be understood by people who have other different cultures, even though I understand other cultures. For our culture to be understood people from other cultures is also the intercultural understanding.Therefore, it is important that we know what our own culture is in order to explain it to others. This kind of intercultural understanding is one of the keys to making our society peaceful.

12:30 - 12:55 B216 Rin KIMURA Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

Lack of Knowledge of Own Culture to Understand Other Cultures

I insist that Japanese should know more about our own cultures. These days, a lot of young Japanese people do not have any or only a little interest in them but have interest in foreign ones, especially in Europe and America. However, if they want to really understand other cultures, they need to have basic knowledge of their own ones. The reason for this is you cannot compare and contrast one's own culture with another without a foundation of basic knowledge. To begin with, Japan has many kinds of cultures and there are traditional ones or subculture like manga. I think later ones are very popular for the world includes Japan; in contrast, the former is not so popular for Japanese. I feel the circumstance is very wasted because Japan is having built high original culture through extraordinary long time. I assure that Japanese people can be proud their own cultures and spread them to the world. As a result, they are able to respect other cultures as real meaning and communicate with foreign people as equal position. Consequently, Japanese must know own cultures more widely and deeply to understand other cultures intrinsically.

12:30 - 12:55 B217 Hedvig ROZSYNOI, Aichi Gakuin University

Ethnicity and Identity and Rural Settlements: A Case of Nagaland

The paper focuses on the hilly area of North-East part of India called Nagaland. It provides a brief overview of historical events, colonial and post-colonial impacts, religious beliefs, empowerment through global indigenism, and identification of ethnic elements of this area. The paper attempts to see how the geopolitical location, historical context, socio-economic and political forces are shaping the present-day Nagaland.

The study attempts to briefly highlight some of the most pressing environmental and social issues this hilly area face. It is prone to suffer from prolonged period of droughts, landslides due to heavy rain. It could seriously hinder its development and affect its poor and marginalized rural population. The other serious issue is migration outflow of young generation.

13:05 -13:30

13:05 -13:30 B210 Michael BOYCE, Aichi University

Inclusion: Not just for liberals anymore

Recently, Inclusion has become a very popular term in the liberal academic world. While at first glance, inclusion appears to be a fantastic goal to include all parties in activities, discussions, and negotiations, it has increasingly been used in a more narrow interpretation to mean only including all parties who fit pre-determined criteria for being acceptable to the group. This is not inclusion, but in fact, exclusion. We can not successfully progress in business or society if we exclude individuals with differing values or approaches, and in doing so, further reinforce the polarization of thought that is becoming all too prevalent in society. Recognizing the benefits of truly including all parties in a resolution process, we can chart a path forward to reduce polarization, and foster mutually beneficial arrangements in both business and personal environments. This presentation will briefly review how we have come to this polarized world, and offer ideas for how we can move forward to a more truly inclusive academic and business environment using constructive controversy practices.

13:05 -13:30 B211 Barret R. NIBLING, Sanda Shounkan Senior High School

The Honorable Pursuit of Language with Artificial Intelligence

Going forward, AI (artificial intelligence) will be a predominant tool used to further develop healthy international communication throughout the world. With seemingly endless applications, AI will not only be able to bridge language barriers with direct translations, but could and should also be applicable in assisting in a wide range of tasks involved in second language education. While the current state of the technology simply isn’t there yet, recent breakthroughs have given hope to the prospect of achieving AI capable of complex tasks on par with human level intelligence. However, there are many barriers, scientifically and ethically, that must be addressed before being able to achieve this ideology. This seminar aims to be a healthy discussion on the general status of existing AI systems and to hypothesize about future potential applications in regards to second language development and peace across the globe for the betterment of mankind.

13:05 -13:30 B216 Peter EDWARDS

The Pinwheel: a classroom structure for simulating authentic intergroup contact

This workshop will explain the basic theory and practice of a classroom dynamic that reflects both large and small-scale human interaction. Stemming from the sociological work of Georg Simmel, Gordon Allport, and others, participants will discover simple methods that they can implement next week in their own classes, regardless of level or topic. These techniques have been tested in over a dozen countries. Why do different student group sizes and in-class movement strongly impact social learning and understanding of peaceful negotiations? Join us and find out!

13:05 -13:30 B217 Joshua JODOIN, Kwansei Gakuin University

Promoting Environmental and Social Awareness in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Courses by Integrating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Japanese Higher Education

As Global Climate Change (GCC) and issues of sustainability make the front pages of daily newspapers around the world, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses fail to address these critical issues. Integrating English for Sustainable Development (ESD) in EFL courses offers an opportunity to both increase our student’s environmental awareness as well as teach them important English language skills. The presenter will discuss his research into designing a Special Topics (ST) course in Environmental Ethics at Kwansei Gakuin University that aims to increase students’ environmental awareness and English language proficiency. This presentation will make the case that commonly used environmental topics, such as Climate Change and air pollution, in EFL courses could add significant value for our students by integrating ESD approaches into their design. The presenter will also discuss how environmental and social awareness can be presented in the EFL classroom through promoting learner autonomy, student research, and best practice in ESD. Although students will not embrace every idea presented in our university courses, encouraging students to think deeply about important social issues, like global warming, can only help our students become better global citizens.