My first winter in Japan I went skiing in Nozawa. It was really beautiful and remains one of my very good memories in Japan. I might mention that it was my second time ever to ski. I'm from Florida. On the ski lift on the way to the top of the mountain, where all of the trails start, including the "beginner's," I thought no way does any beginner's course exist on this mountain, because it's way too big. I soon found out I was right. There were courses labeled beginner's, but beginner's they were not. I'm a beginner. I was a beginner. The courses were not for beginners.


So keep that in mind when I tell you that the friend I was with basically tricked me onto an intermediate course, by "mistake." By the time we were on the intermediate hill, we had already gone down a kind of small hill and there was no way to go back. I was going to have to go down the very large intermediate hill. I was genuinely scared, I mean really. This was probably one of the top 10 scariest times in my life. Maybe top 5. My life hasn't been a very dangerous one.


So my friend was trying to teach me how to zig zag down the slope. But on the sides of the hill you had to turn around, and to turn around you had to face down, and that meant gaining an enormous amount of speed. So to prevent this speed gaining, my friend tried to teach me how to turn around without facing down. First both feet are facing, say, left. Then you turn, say, your right foot towards the right so that your feet are facing in exactly opposite directions. Like a ballerina. My friend showed me how to do it and I said no no no no no. I'm not flexible in that way, I can't do it. He said yes you can, just try it. I started to try and then immediately wanted to stop, because I was right, I'm not flexible in that way, but he actually tried to push my leg into the position. With skis, skis are kind of stronger than your leg. So if skis go in a direction that your leg doesn't want to, your leg has no choice and you can get pretty injured. This was a situation like that. Luckily I yelled at him loud enough to make him stop and my leg didn't get hurt. Crazy though, absolutely crazy. Never do that to someone. I finally ended up just zooming straight down the entire hill at an enormous speed.


So I want to say that everyone is different. And advice that's good for some people is not good for everyone. And the advice that you get from any one person is only the advice that is good for them. So you may luck out and be similar to the person your getting advice from, but in many cases that won't be true. So my friend's advice was very good for him and anyone flexible like him, but had I followed it, it would have resulted in some serious damage to my leg. So I was smart enough to say no, this is not for me.


Please do this with your studies. You'll get lots of advice from lots of people, and all of it is really valid for the right type of person. But you have to know yourself and what is good for you, how do you learn best, what are YOUR SPECIFIC weaknesses, and then make wise choices about what advice to follow. It'd be crazy if you always just blindly followed the advice of others. You're life would probably suck.


There's a conclusion that follows pretty naturally from this idea: you may not always be able to find a person similar enough to you to give advice that's applicable to you. In that case, you WILL have to think of your own answers. But you're capable of it. Just try. Think of your own study ideas, study strategies. People are always asking my advice for different tests. And I give them my advice. But I feel like, just from the odds of it and all the different kinds of people out there, my advice will only apply to definitely less than 50% of the people I give it to. So this is actually the best advice I can give: THINK OF YOUR OWN!


Why don't you try it now? Think of some weak area you have. First figure out why you're weak there, what is YOUR SPECIFIC problem, maybe why you have the problem, then try to think of a way to fix it. And... go.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【learning the right lesson.】2009.08.12 (Wed)

On numerous occasions I've realized that people should relax more. Really. When you walk really fast, you're not relaxed. Walk slower if you have time. Don't worry so much. You'll live longer. Tell other people to relax. But do it in a way that they know you're being sincere. Sometimes people need a reminder.


How to relax? Well, I'm sure we all have our own methods for relaxation. I'll share a few of mine with you in case want to try something different.


The first is almost universal. Breathing. Just take ten slow, deep breaths, and it will make a world of difference. Even just one deep breath has a measurable effect. To take it one step further, I'll explain Yogic breathing. This is best done lying down, although I've been practicing on the Ginza line lately. Lie down. Fill you lungs with air. Your chest and your stomach should look 'bigger'. Now, as you exhale, keep your chest lifted. This means you're keeping the air inside your upper lungs, and only releasing the air in your lower lungs. This is possible because you will be using your diaphragm to push the air out of you lower lungs. When you inhale again, your stomach should be rising. Repeat. When we are stressed, we tend to take short, shallow breaths. The lower lungs aren't really used. Using this part of your lungs not only increases your lung capacity with practice, but it has a definite calming effect.


Second: Do something that requires a lot of focus. It could be playing guitar, assembling a model car or anime figure, drawing a picture, etc. Guitar is not always the best because, like exercising, there is a lot of noise involved. Quiet activities are best. This is because silence enables you to lose track of time, as does excessive focus on one task.


This brings me to my third method: Enter a timeless dimension. Now, this may sound strange, or like some advanced meditative technique. And maybe it is, but the road to this advanced ability is a very relaxing one. Ask the Praying Mantis about it. They are experts. They can sit in one place, unmoving, for hours, like they're in a deep sleep...but really, they're just on 'pause.' Imagine if you could just pause your state of awareness for those 8 minutes that you're waiting for a train. It would be gone in an instant from your perspective.


At this point, you may not be able to imagine it. It's like time travel. 'Practice!' I say. My bed has many uses. One of those uses is as a time machine. If I want to go cycling but it's raining, I can climb into my bed, close my eyes, and fast-forward through two hours to a future when it's not raining. When I'm on the Ginza line, it's mostly just my body that is present. My mind is elsewhere. I've slowed myself down, causing everything around me to speed up. I encourage you to try this (if you have some time to work with.) Sometimes a good aid is to listen to some very slow, down-tempo music first, and then move onto silence. In this way you can stop your world and find inner peace.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Sandy先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Embracing Change】2009.08.05 (Wed)

A pretty common topic of discussion around Kaplan is computers. Lots of people are buying netbooks these days - everything is so cheap! I recently purchased a new "all-in-one" printer/copier/scanner/fax for far half the price I paid for a plain printer 8 years ago, and it uses half the ink (the reason for the new purchase - the old printer still worked just fine).

When I first came to Japan, hardly anybody had a PC. Most people had "word processors", and there were few computers even in big companies. Foreign software didn't work because every computer company had its own proprietary version of DOS. It was hard to get information about just about everything related to international business. Networks? The Internet? Forget about it.

What amazing changes we've seen over the last 15-20 years. I can't wait to see what things will be like in another 10!

▼▽▼▼【講師】Kurt先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【It's Raining Tadpoles.】2009.07.29 (Wed)

（*SATはThe Scholastic Assessment Testのことで、アメリカの高校生が大学に進学する際に受験する大学進学適正試験です。）

For many of my SAT students, the essay is the most daunting part of the test. It's the only place on the test (apart from a few grid-in math questions) where you have to produce something, rather than simply choose correct answers. Students who come into class thinking that the essay is easy often think so because they believe that they're going to be able to write about the subject of their choice, or that simply producing a well-written essay that's somewhat off topic will earn them points.



The bad news about the essay is that this isn't the case; if you write an off topic essay, you'll receive a score of zero. If you write an essay that's on-topic but off assignment you might earn a three if your writing is outstanding, but certainly will do no better. Don't treat the SAT essay like a college application essay; the two are alike in a few ways, but fundamentally different, and certainly not interchangeable. Here are a few general tips:



Make sure you understand the Assignment-- On all SAT essay prompts, you'll see a quote enclosed in a box, with an assignment question and instructions underneath. Read the assignment before you read the quote, and re-read the assignment a few times while you plan your essay to make sure you don't break off track. Most SAT assignment questions fundamentally break down into the form of "Is [some concept] [this way] or [that way]?" For instance, "Are [people who offer advice] [usually wrong] or [right]?," or Is [true friendship] [supporting your friends no matter what] or [telling them the truth, even if it hurts their feelings]?"
Understanding how the assignments are typically structured allows you to create a general template for how you'll write your essay before you even enter the testing center. The more preperation you can do beforehand, the less stressed you'll be on test day.



Have an "infobank" ready to help you come up with examples-- The SAT will ask you to support your position with specific examples. I find it much harder to think of an example of something out of thin air than to refer back to a specific source. For instance, if my essay is about true friendship, I would ask myself "Is there an example of true friendship in Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, The Watergate investigation, Spider-man, etc.?" These infobank examples are books, movies, or situations from history that I know a little about. The fact that Spider-man is a comic book wouldn't stop me from using it. There are no trivial examples, as long as they're specific and relevant to the topic at issue, and I know enough about them to be able to discuss them comfortably.



Write a thesis-- This is the toughest part of planning your essay, because it's the most philosopical and profound issue. A good thesis does two things; it tells the reader what you think, and, broadly, why you think it. Stating your opinion is important, because it shows the test-grader that you can make up your mind. But articulating why you feel that way is no less important, because that demonstrates insight, an important component in high-scoring essays.

A cogent thesis basically makes the essay write itself. The example I always use in class is a simple one: "I think dogs are more important animals to society than cats, because dogs can be trained to do tasks cats can't, and offer us companionship in ways that cats can't." From just that thesis, you could probably write my essay for me, because everyone's heard of seeing-eye dogs, rescue dogs, guard dogs, etc. A good thesis anchors and forecasts your essay.



Write tight, focused body paragraphs-- A good body paragraph does three things. First, it introduces your specific example, and broadly establishes why it's relevant. Second, it adds detail and development of the example, showing philosophical insight and appreciation for the subtleties of the assignment questions. Finally, a good body paragraph reiterates why that particular example illustrates and supports your thesis.

For students whose english writing is a little slow, the above strategy allows you to say a lot in relatively few words, and to avoid digression from the assignment. Even a relatively short essay can earn a great score if you make every word count.



Leave the reader with your thesis-- Paraphrase your thesis in the conclusion, so that the reader leaves the essay knowing that you have stayed on-assignment throughout the essay, and haven't lost your way. The SAT essay is only a persuasive essay in name; you are really graded on how well you organize and articulate your point of view. And finally,



Remember that human beings, not computers, grade your essay-- Write as neatly as you can, begin a new paragraph every time you broach a new issue, and make genrous use of transition words. Don't say nice things about Hitler (I'm not kidding, a surprising number of writers do), or rant about how stupid your (or someone else's) parents, teachers, race, religion, government, or country is. A computer will give a great grade to a focused and articulate essay that calls Barak Obama a mendacious, imperialist swine, and glorifies Kim Jong Il's reeducation camps, as long as those examples are reasonably related to the assignment question. A human is a lot more likely to get offended and find a reason to give you a bad grade. Unfair, perhaps, but there you have it.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Douglas先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【It Really is Higher Education】2009.05.27 (Wed)

When I came to Japan, I remember being really really shocked at the train culture. Everyone packs in and pushes each other and shoves and stands really close and pushes. In America this is pretty rude. And I couldn't figure it out because I thought that Japanese people were supposed to be so polite. So I came away from it thinking that Japanese people were really rude. My eventual reaction was to reciprocate what I was perceiving, which was rudeness, and I became quite rude on the trains myself. Then I was with a very close Japanese friend of mine and they pointed this out, that I was being really rude. And I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I thought, me? Rude? Do you SEE everyone around me?!


I've heard many explanations for why Japanese people act like they do on the train: packing in together is actually polite because they're making room for others. Japanese people just don't mind and aren't as sensitive about personal space as we are, and so on. Maybe you can give me more explanations. But some of these alternative
explanations must be right, because this many people in Japan just can't be that rude.


So. At first, I was learning the wrong thing from an experience. I think this tends to happen a lot. We are always learning something from what's going on around us, or making judgments. If you go to a western country and realize that we're a bit stronger minded than you are, you might walk away thinking we're aggressive, and then you'll try to reciprocate it and turn into a nasty person, like I did in Japan. But assertive is a better word to use for Westerners and the difference is really subtle. Basically aggression is rude but assertion is not. Or, if as a child you hit a big dog and it bites you, you might become afraid of dogs. But dogs aren't really that scary, you just shouldn't hit them. So the lesson you learned was that dogs are scary, but the correct lesson is that you shouldn't hit dogs.


I think a lot of times our first experience with something is when we will learn the most from it. For example, if I have a great father as a child, no matter how many horrible men I meet in the future, I will still probably have somewhere in my heart the idea that men are pretty good. But if I have a horrible father as a child, no matter how many great men I meet, I will still probably always have it in my heart that men are bad, and I may not be able to trust them as much as I would have if I had had a great father.


I'm actually kind of formulating this idea as I write, but it's starting to make more and more sense. So it makes me think that I want to be really aware and careful when I experience something for the first time. If you give yourself over to emotional reactions instead of sound reasoning, it could be pretty dangerous and you could end up with a really warped view of the world. Of coarse more experiences of the same thing will basically balance out your views, but maybe not completely. I think it's hard to escape from first impressions, especially if they're strong ones.


Ok, so when you are studying for a test, if you bomb it the first time you should be really careful to learn the correct lesson. If you are constantly getting a certain type of question wrong, you can never get the probability questions on the SAT or you can never get vocab questions on the TOEFL, it doesn't mean that you're useless at that type of question. If your failure is constant, it probably means that how you're studying is faulted, or how you try to answer is faulted, or something else. It probably doesn't mean that you're brain is faulted.


So don't get so discouraged. Think of it like a puzzle. There's a truth behind most things (everything, I believe), a correct reason behind most problems and you just have to try to find it. But there are many wrong reasons to every problem. Make sure you don't believe them!


▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Neva Givu Apu!!】2009.07.15 (Wed)