Just got back from the Arakawa English immersion camp. It was definitely a roller coaster ride of excitement. Everyday, none stop until 2 or 3 in the morning (partly my fault for choosing the party room for sleeping) followed by a nice bright and early wake up calls around 6:30. This of course was followed by breakfast with the junior high kids, which actually was one of the highlights of the experience. It was always a challenge to get them to speak English only but I saw it as being great fun, then a half-hour break before we began our lessons for the day.
For all three days of lessons, I had to work on pronunciation through tongue twisters and a variety of other drills. In the spirit of the Olympics, one of the drills that I came up with was one in which the kids had to say set word phrases such as 'would you', 'did you', etc. as fast as they could and I would time them with a stop watch. One of the kids said the set all the word phrases in 2.61 seconds which was incredible because I don't even think I could do that.
Overall the schedule was pretty hectic but we all had a lot of fun and at the end it was pretty sad to see everyone go.
The Japanese teachers, who were college kids that had little or no English speaking background, had to speak English with the Japanese kids the whole time, so I think that they had a very difficult time. However, it was great fun and I think the kids had a great time learning English too. Now time to hibernate for a week before starting up school again. YEAH!!
About the pictures, we went to a souvenir shop to buy, what else, souvenirs. These places are always gold for finding the stereotypical 'Engrish' or Japanese English. These were some classic examples. Do you like your Milk a little Cooky? Or how about some flesh cakes? They're the meatist. The bottom pic is a picture of the campfire, which was about 6 feet tall at one point but in this picture it's about maybe half a foot tall.
