Meeting 15: Global Issues Discussion (Day 2)

Evaluation: Please put your evaluation in the envelope of my door (rm.439) by Friday, July 31.

Issue 1: Rich and Poor
Main Points:
- The reasons that the rich countries are getting richer and the poor countries poorer:

1. Poor countries borrow so much money from rich countries and they cannot pay it back so the interest on bthe debt increases. Because of the debt, poorer countries cannot afford to spend money on fixing social problems
   
2. Corruption of leaders

What can we do to make this problem better?
- Give more money but make sure it does not go into the leaders' pockets
- Donate money ourselves to poor countries for solving social problems
- Instead of money send people who can manage the money
- We can easily give money to poor countries but it is not good.It is better to give money to support the basis of industry so countries can make money (=grow their economy) by themselves.
- We must change the international political and economic order. Every country consumes products made in China because the products made in China are not expensive. Most of the money goes to foreign country investors. Because so mnay products are made in China workers in richer countries cannot find employment.

To learn more, please attend the United Nations University Conference on Nov 21- 23


Issue 2: Global Warming
Main Points:
There is a lot of CO2 and Methane and they cause global warming.
Global warming causes many problems. For example:
1. Ice melting in the North and South Pole causes the sea levels to rise
2. Rise in temperatures causes storms

What can we do to make the problem better?
Don't eat beef.
Don't use cars
Commute by bicycle, bus, train, walking
and much more.....

Issue 3: Children
Main Points
There are a lot of children around the world who cannot receive education. One problems is that many children will not be able to work, they become homeless and are forced to steal food.
Another problem is that children are forced to work instead of going to school.
It's a big problem that they cannot have an education.

What can we do?
We can do some volunteer work. We can donate pens, notebooks and we can go to poorer countries and teach subjects for free.

Meeting 14: Global Issues Discussion Day 1

In today's meeting the Uighur group presented about disease and the Philippines group presented about weapons and war. After the discussion various MMCE members also gave various ideas about how we can make the problems better. It was a very interesting meeting today and I am looking forward to next week's meeting. Please remember that next week we will start MMCE at 10:20 AM.
Below is a summary of the main points of each presentation.

Disease: (By Uighur)

Main Point of the Presentation

Developing countries suffer from infectious diseases such as Aids, cholera, influenza, tuberculosis, measles and malaria. Many people dies from these diseases every year even though these diseases are preventable. The most dangerous diseases in developed countries are cancer and hear disease.

What can be done to make the problem better?

• Help people change their life conditions such as getting access to clean water
• .Education about infectious diseases
• Donate money for vaccinations.
• "Don't give fish but teach how to fish"
• Make drugs such as drugs to treat Aids cheaper
• People should change their lifestyle to prevent health problems (no overeating, etc,)

Weapons and War: (by the Philippines)

Main point of the presentation
There are many wars going on even today.
Ex. Only in Africa there are more than 10 wars.
8 international wars and 25 civil wars in 2005

One problem that results from these wars is land mines
About 2000 people are killed or injured by landmines every month.
It is difficult to remove landmines because it is dangerous and expensive.
Fact:Between China and Vietnam there are 2 million land mines

What can be done?

• Monetary support for removing mines (Opposite opinion - giving money is not good because they might use the money for other military affairs. )
• Find the landmines and mark them
• Don't make new landmines
• Government should persuade countries with landmines to join the Ottawa Treaty
• United Nations has the removing mines project and we can give monetary support to the United Nations. It is better than giving it to some government.
  

Meeting 13: Preparation for the Global Issues Mini Conference

Procedures for Global Issues Mini Conference

Today, July 15, each group will prepare for their mini-presentation.

Next week, July 21, we will make 5 new groups of 5 people. The success of this meeting will depend on EVERY MMCE member attending. One absent member will affect the discussion. Each new group will consist of representatives from the other groups. The representatives will take turns presenting about their global issue. Each representative has 28 minutes to present and the mini conference will last for about 2 meetings. The content of your presentation will be based on the Global Issues in English textbook. An outline of your presentation is written below.

1 Topic Introduction: Briefly introduce your topic by asking one of the conversation questions
2 Pre-presentation activity: Ask a factual question, have your listeners complete a graph, or read the profile
3 Helpful Words: Quiz people on the new words. (5 minutes)
4. My Global Issue: Read the information about your global issue and then ask 5 – 8 questions about it to the other group members. (10 minutes) You can ask the questions before or after your presentaion. Listeners: If you do not understand something you can ask during the presentation!
5. Post-presentation activity: Discussion- Discuss the following (5 minutes)
- Do you have any questions about the presentation, please ask!
- Did anything surprise you about the presentation? What? Did this presentation change your thinking in any way, how so?
- How does this problem affect you?
- Are you doing anything (unintentionally) to cause this problem? What?

6. Solution: Let’s brain storm things that we can do to make this problem better. (5 minutes)

At the ending of the second meeting, each base group will gather again and share what was said in 4 and 5.

Meetings 11&12: Back to Culture and Culture Phenomenon

In this meeting we returned to looking at culture and cultural phenomenon. We did not cover very much new ground, rather, we mostly reviewed what we had learned in Meetings 5 & 6. We reviewed the following:

the Meaning of Culture

Culture Products:
Artifacts
Institutions
Art

Practices
Acts
Operations
Scenarios
Lives
Non Verbal Communication
Kinesics
Oculessics
Haptics
Olfactics
Chronemics
Proxemics

Next time we will study the following cultural phenomenon:

Perspectives
Power Distance
Individualism
Masculinity
Uncertainty Avoidance
High/Low Context

Communities

Persons

Meeting 10: Day 2 of the Breaking Down National Stereotypes Discussion

Last week the guests presented for the Breaking Down National Stereotypes Discussion. Below is our schedule for Day 2. After our schedule, I will post the summaries of each guest's presentation:

1. Ice Breaking: 4 Corners
2. Mini Discussions with guests:

• Each group will have 10 minutes to talk to a guest. Here is some possible content to discuss.
  

A) Follow-up on the guest’s presentation

• Did you understand all of the guest’s presentation? What parts did you not understand? Are there any words, phrases, or concepts you heard for the first time? Ask the guest questions about his or her speech to clarify what she/he said. You can also confirm your guest’s answers to the below questions:

Are there any responses that you are proud of?
Are there any responses you do no think are true?
What else do you think we should know about your country?

• Until now, you have talked about how people in your country imagine your guest’s country, why don’t you ask your guest what her/his images of Japan were before she/he came to this country. How accurate were the guest’s images?

3.“Discussion on Values” activity (Time Permitting)
4. Closing words: JH

Post Discussion
Please write about what you learned from the discussions that you had with two guests on the MMCE Blog. Please do this by June 30.

Summaries of Last Week's Presentations

Uyghr

Uyghur is regarded as unknown place for many people in the world. Even though people don’t know much of its cultures, we can see some of them because Uyghur is the mother of many things in the world. For example, noodles are origins of pasta, and the Uyghur language is origin of east languages such as Turkish.
Also,Uyghur is really multicultural place. There are 9 countries around Uyghur (China, Pakistan, Mongolia, Turkey etc.) that have influences to its culture. Though there are many faces in Uyghur and some looks like a Chinese, only 10 percent of the Uyghur population can speak Chinese and 100 percent of the people are Muslim.
As to our group’s survey, almost all are right but there are some wrong stereotypes. Uyghur people are not nomadic nor nomadic.

France

Food:French live on bread. Wine is famous,but
Beaujolais Nouveau isn't treat an
expensive wine. And cheese has nothing
to do with France.

People:There are basically mix people in
France. Black,Arabian...there are
various race. And,there are many
strikes.

National flag:Flag of France was a symbol
of the revolution movement.
It expresses freedom and
equality.

Russia


People know a lot about Russian people. For example, Dostoevsky, Putin, Rasputin, Sharapova, Arshavin, Tchaikovskii and so on.
Many people think that Russia is a cold country, but it depends on season and locations. In northern place, it is very cold and has a lot of snow in winter. On the other hand, Saint Petersburg is about 25 degrees now.
The location of Russia is good because Russia locates between Europe and Asia. Because of the closeness of Europe, Marina can study English and use English, and because of the closeness of Asia, she can learn Asian languages. She chose Japanese as her third language among the Asian languages.


Philippines


【race】
After the presentation→In fact,not so many black men and they don’t call black man
but ‘brown man’ in Southest Asia.

【language】
After the presentation→In fact,they speaks over 180 kinds of languages.And under
the data is survey for language’s percentage.
　※Filipino and English is official language.

Main article
Native Language
Tagalog 22million, Cebuano 20million, Ilokano 　 7.7million, Hiligaynon 7million, Waray-Waray 3.1million, Kapampangan 2.9million, Chavacano 2.5million

【climate】
After the presentation→In fact,North area is not so hot though Southest Asia.

【geography】
After the presentation→In fact Philippine is made of 7107 islands.It’s very surprise truth.

【religion】
After the presentation→In fact,there are 90 percent for Christiantity.This is unbelievable,but we got under the data.

Religion in the Philippines
Religion Percent
Christiantity 90％, Islam 5％, Buddhism 2％, Hinduism 1％, Others　2％

【culture】
After the presentation→In fact the pub is where only they can drink and drug is the
world problem.
Our group was very surprised about religion because 90 percent for Christiantity.
Now,we know that is prejudice and ideology.There were our image from some
Information by the education and the medias.

Pakistan


Food:Pakistani like spicy food like India.

Religion:The religion of Pakistan is Islam.
The turban is related to Islam.

Climate:There are some climate situation in
Pakisatan.

Person:The color of skin is blown not black.

Incident:There are disputes not incident.
Individual person decides to participate to disputes.

Meeting 9: Day 1 of the Breaking Down National Stereotypes Discussion

Day 1 of the Breaking Down National Stereotypes Discussion will be held today. Here is our schedule of events:
1) Introduction to MMCE
2) Mind Map Viewing
3) Ice Breaking: 2 Truths, One Lie
4) Confirm the results in groups
5) Guest Presentations (5 minute presentation + 5 minute question and answer):
1. Jolina F., Phillipines
2. Ablajan I., Uyghr
3. Marina, Russia
4. Janet A., France
5. Sara B., Pakistan

CLGs: I would like each CLG to ask a question to their guest after the presentation. Also, I would like each CLG to summarize their guests presentation and write it as a comment on the blog.

Meeting 8: Preparing for the Breaking Down National Stereotypes Discussion

Making Mind Maps

I. As a group, please make a mind map based on the data you collected. In the center of the mind map should be an image of your country and then you should have an image of each category. Also, somewhere in your mind map I think it would be good if you could include some basic information about the country. See the data here.

Here is a sample mind map of a country from last year.
Country: Mexico
Categories: Food, Geography, Artifact, Sports, Color, Plant/Animal, Image


Country: China
Categories: Culture, Disaster, Event, Food, Person, Personality, Policy, Society

II. Unfortunately, I have not received the completed data from 3 groups. For the next MMCE, I would like you to do the following:

• Please contact your guest THIS WEEK and arrange to give them the categorized and sorted data . Please tell them that you would like them to speak for about 5 minutes about the following:

1. Which responses that people wrote about your region/country are you proud of?
2. Is there anything written that you think is not completely true or wrong? If so, which responses?
3. Is their anything you would like to say about your region/ country that has not been written? If so, what would you like to say?

• Please arrange to meet your guest again BEFORE MMCE on June 17 and escort him/her to the MMCE room (rm.405).
  

III Plan for Day 1 of the Discussion

Below is the tentative plan for Day 1 of our Discussion:
The Discussion
10:30 ~ 10:35: Intro by JH
10:35 ~ 10:45: Mind Map Gallery Viewing
10:45 ~ 10:55 : Ice Breaking
10:55 ~ 12:00 Guest Presentations (5 minutes presentation + 5 minutes question and answer)

Each group, while your guest is speaking, please take notes. As a group, please summarize what your guest said and e-mail it to JH by Monday, June 15. I will post it on the blog so others can read it.

Each group is responsible for asking its guest a question during the question and answer period.

Here is the completed data that I have:
Russia
France
Philippines
Pakistan
Uyghur

Photos of last year's presentations:
USA

China