みなさんこんにちは。
カプラン事務局からお知らせです。

◆◆Head Instructors についてのお知らせ

KAPLAN English Centerでは、Mark先生の後任として、
Melanie先生とAnthony先生を教務担当のチーフ講師としてチームを構成しております。
専任講師は毎週教務ミーティングを行っておりますが、その中でクラスのコンテンツ充実を目指し協議しており、Melanie先生とAnthony先生の2人がリーダーとなって様々なことをまとめておりますので
クラスや学習など、教務のことでご相談等ありましたらお気軽に声をかけていただければと思います。

▼Melanie先生からのコメントです▼▽
To all Kaplan students:

As most of you know, our outstanding, Head Instructor, Mark, has gone on to work for another company in Tokyo. It has been a substantial loss to those of us who have been working with him (or taking his classes). He meant a lot to us at Kaplan, but we wish him the very best for his career and know that we still have opportunities to stay in touch with him. I know many of you even went to see his art exhibition this month!

Mark helped us out by being a great organizer and communicator. He did a lot to keep things running smoothly for students, staff and other instructors. Such an important and vital task cannot be ignored, and so we have been receiving some inquiries about who would be taking his place.

I'd like to take this opportunity to respond to those questions. Effective in February, Anthony and I are filling the position of Head Instructor. This means that we will be taking a role similar to Mark's, and together we will be assuming the responsibilities of maintaining communication, organizing the preparation of course materials and coordinating various other aspects of the English Centers.

If you have any questions regarding this transition or would like a more specific description of our duties and the role that we fill, please don't hesitate to ask us! I know that I haven't met all of you yet, so you should also feel welcome to introduce yourselves to us. Catch up with us sometime, even if it's just to say hello or if you've got something more serious you'd like to discuss.

We're looking forward to continuing to make Kaplan the best it can be, and we are excited to be given this opportunity in a school with such dedicated and enthusiastic students!

よろしく お願いします!
-Melanie

◇◇Suggestion Boxのお知らせ

KAPLANではWeek4後のアンケート以外にも、常に生徒さんからの
クラスに関するご要望やご意見等を寄せていただき，今後のサービス等の向上を図ることを目的として「STUDENT SUGGESTION BOX」 を設置しています。
「こんなクラスがあったらいいのに！」というようなご意見等ありましたら
なるべく詳細にお書きいただき各校のSuggestion Boxへご投函いただければと思います。
特にクラスコンテンツに関しては、講師一同、今後の参考にさせていただきたいと
皆様からのご意見を求めておりますので
どんな小さなことでも構いません！
皆様からのSuggestionをお待ちしております！

Ok, I admit it. I am probably the last person on earth who qualifies to write about American football...or ANY sport, for that matter. I myself have never really cared about having enthusiasm when it comes to watching sports. Every time I watch, I have to ask someone to explain the rules to me. Again.


Sure, I enjoyed attending a football game here and there when I was in university (GO DUCKS!!) and I won't deny that I had a good time at the occasional baseball or ice hockey game in the past. I even played on the soccer team when I was in elementary school. I also freely admit that I would be willing to attend sporting events in the future. But the enjoyment of those experiences comes, for me, mostly from the people I am spending time with, and not from whatever might be happening on the field.


And yet, as an American and an English teacher, I feel compelled to write about a single aspect of my culture that appears to me to be the epitomic blend of so many icons of American society: television, pop culture, junk food, competition (athletic and otherwise) and good-old-fashioned capitalism. What in the world, you ask, could I be talking about? The Super Bowl.


Anyone who has lived in America in January can attest to the fact that Americans have a peculiar obsession with that one Sunday every year on which the climax of the football season is staged. The Super Bowl is the proverbial cherry on top of the sundae of American sports. Now, I am well aware of the fact that crazed sports fans can be found in every nook and cranny of the globe, but I think anyone would be hard-pressed to find another location on earth where an annual national sporting event eclipses even some national holidays in so many respects. For instance, the only other day of the year on which Americans eat more food is Thanksgiving, which coincidentally, is also an American tradition that has become associated with watching football.


Apart from the sport itself being uniquely American, our grand "tradition" of capitalism has been thrown into the mix. The sheer number of viewers alone suggests the advantage given to any company who can afford to advertise during the game; nowadays, a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl costs about $3 million. On February 1st of this year, nearly 100 million people tuned in to watch, making it the most-watched Super Bowl--or sporting event in general--of all time, pushing advertisers to put their best and brightest ideas into the creation of their ads. Under these circumstances, Super Bowl commercials have become almost as popular as the game itself. In fact, for many like me who don't really care at all about the progress of the game, the advertisements are often the only thing worth watching. (Try this website if you'd like to see some highlights of commercials from past Super Bowls:www.superbowl-ads.com)


It is probably my perpetual confusion when it comes to understanding certain athletic events that is the reason why Super Bowl Sunday has never made complete sense to me. Nevertheless, every once in a while, in January, I feel a little bit like I'm missing out on something. I guess no matter how silly it may seem, and no matter how little I care about American football, I don't mind putting up with watching a bunch of guys run around on a field as long as I enjoy spending time with the people who watch it with me.


P.S. Asako--I have read 141 pages out of a total of 232.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Melanie先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Fun With Morphemes】2008.10.17 (Fri)
・【More About Morphemes】2008.11.21 (Fri)
・【Happy Holidays!!】2008.12.26 (Fri)
・【My 2009 "To Do" List】2009.01.30 (Fri)

ニューズウィーク最新版、早いものでもう3月号ですね。
寒い冬ももう終わり（とはいってもまだまだ寒い日は続いておりますが・・・）
暖かくなるのが待ち遠しいですね！

◆ワークショップスケジュールはコチラからどうぞ。
◆今週分ニューズウィークリストのダウンロードはコチラ！



3/2(MON)から使用するニューズウィーク▼▽

「Facebook Diplomacy」や「Toxic Paper」、「Why Baseball is in Denial」など、今週も興味深い記事をクラスで取り上げていきます。
3/2(MON)からのニューズウィークリストダウンロードはコチラからどうぞ！

来週はアカデミックイヤースケジュールの4週目になります。
選択クラスでテストがある方は頑張ってください！

みなさんこんにちは！KAPLAN事務局です。

本日Eddieのご両親がKAPLANに来てくれました！

先日生まれたMiaちゃんに会いにオーストラリアから来日しているそう。
石渡BLOGでも触れておりますが、
Eddieのご両親も教師とのこと！3人とも素敵な先生ですよね。
昨日は銀座校に、今日は表参道校にご両親を連れて来てくれ、
講師、スタッフ、生徒さんに紹介をしてくれました。
講師のご両親が来校してくれるのはとても嬉しいことですね。
ステキなゲストを連れてきてくれてありがとうございました！

If it's possible, which it really is, I recommend being interested in the topic that you have to be tested on. And by interested, I mean really interested. Before I made my major mathematics, I thought that I wanted to be a physical therapist. So I was taking anatomy and biology and those kinds of classes. I soon found out that I wasn't interested in those topics very much at all, and definitely not enough to carry me through to a master's in physical therapy. However, I realized this in the middle of a semester and still had to get through it without killing my GPA.


So what did I do? Even though I knew the entire semester (and classes I had previously taken) was ENTIRELY USELESS, the knowledge I was gaining would benefit me in no obvious, practical way, I tried my best to be interested in the topic so that I could get good grades on my test. If I study something and it's boring, I'm very unlikely to remember it. But if I study something and am very interested in it, I'm much more likely to remember it. So even though I had decided to change my major BECAUSE I wasn't interested in biological topics, I MADE myself become interested in it. For example, to this day, I can still (loosely) remember how caffeine works, how it affects your body. I remember it because I thought it was interesting. And I still remember some very specific bone names because I made up stories attached to the bone and its name to make it interesting to myself. I think this is part of why I could eventually do well in math. I love math. It's very interesting to me so it's very easy to remember.


I've read that for information to pass from your short-term memory to your long-term memory it is not a matter of time or of mere repetition. It is a matter of the information becoming meaningful to you in usually some emotional kind of way. So the name of a certain bone is not meaningful to me at all, and definitely not emotionally. But because of the stories I made up to attach to it to make it meaningful, I could remember it much more easily. For example the zygomatic bone on your skull sticks out from your face.

For some, it's very prominent and can make a kind of zigzag shape, kind of. So, the zygomatic bone is easy to remember because it makes a zigzag. Kind of. Another example, I met someone with the last name Iwase. To me, Iwase sounds really similar to shiawase, and this person is in fact a very happy person. So it's very easy for me to remember their name because of this meaningful attachment I've made to the name. When I see the person, I first think of shiawase, and then I remember the true name, Iwase. How caffeine works was easy for me to remember because I'm a big advocate of caffeine and in America people tried to tell me that too much was bad for you. But did you know that some of your natural energy is basically blocked or broken down (I don't remember the specifics) by something, and all caffeine does is block the energy blocker. Caffeine doesn't add artificial energy to your system; it allows your natural energy to be more fully used.


I could keep going with examples, because this is in fact how I remember most facts. But whether it's some vocabulary word or biological process or mathematical formula, just rote memorization is not the most effective way to memorize something. I'd like to suggest that you try making stories or something meaningful to attach to information to make it easier to memorize. And standardized tests are basically a time of dumping onto paper an overload of memorized things. So as this works for me, I hope it can work for you.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Something Interesting】2008.10.22 (Wed)
・【an interesting book】2008.11.28 (Fri)
・【To study methods】2009.01.14 (Wed)
・【The 90%】2009.02.04 (Wed)