MBA Network Party in Tokyo

One of my students, Emi Yokoshima, asked me to post this network party announcement. It looks like a good chance to meet some great people!

＊＊＊＊ MBA Network Party in Tokyo II のご案内 ＊＊＊＊

 

MBA関係者によるカジュアルなパーティーのご案内です。
Class of 2014の合格者を中心に、Class of 2013の在校生、
卒業生にも多数ご参加いただく予定です。

アプリカントの方も大歓迎なので、是非お気軽に参加いただき、
MBAコミュニティでのネットワークを広げてください！

日時： 6/10 （日） 17:00 - 20:00
場所：ホテル日航東京 「アポロン」
スタイル： カジュアル、立食ブッフェ、飲み放題
最寄駅: ゆりかもめ「台場」より徒歩1分（直結）
費用： 6,000円 （予定）
人数： 200人 （場所の関係上、200人に達し次第、締切とさせていただく場合がございます）

詳細、お申し込みは ⇒ https://www.facebook.com/events/362344727159439/

ご参加お待ちしております！

幹事： 湯浅エムレ秀和、清水志野、横島愛弥

＊＊＊＊ ＊＊＊＊ ＊＊＊＊ ＊＊＊＊ ＊＊＊＊ ＊＊＊＊

23 again!

23 is the E4TG magic number!

To begin with, it's the median top score. Here's the speaking score distribution for 2011:

PLEASE compare this to ANY other TOEFL speaking preparation program on Earth!

Also, 23 of the students in the above chart will enroll at Top Ten American MBA programs in 2012:

• Chicago: 1
• Columbia: 1
• HBS: 0
• Kellogg: 7
• Michigan: 1
• MIT: 4 (2 year program)
• NYU: 2
• Stanford: 1 (2 year program)
• Tuck: 1
• UCB: 1
• UCLA: 1
• Wharton: 3 

Many people were accepted at multiple programs, but are not double-counted in this list. I estimate that one-third of all Japanese going to Top Ten American MBA programs were my students in 2011, and this includes ZERO 帰国子女!


We also had many students accepted at INSEAD, LBS, IESE, and other top business schools around the world. It was a good year!

A sumo class?

Piggybacking on the post earlier this week on r/l/w pronunciation, here's a mistake I heard in class last week:

• I go to a sumo English class every Saturday

If you read the earlier post, you can probably figure out that he meant "a small English class," but he rounded his lips instead of smiling. You must smile for the English "l"! He also added a syllable between "s" and "m" instead of blending them.


Some mistakes are funnier than others.


Please use English well!

Try this: "Growl"

I am superbusy getting all the new students through orientation, but I want to post a reminder on the difference between r, l, and w:

1. For the "r", keep your tongue down and purse your lips. Don't round the lips.
2. For the "l", keep your tongue on the back of your top front teeth and smile.
3. For the "w", tightly round your lips.

 Practice with the word "growl." If you can say that word well, you shouldn't have a problem with any other r/l/w word.


Please use English well!

Quality and Quantity II

As I said yesterday, "effective" and "efficient" are often confused. The basic meaning of "effective" is "does a good job," so you can use this for things which improve the performance. My strategies for TOEFL speaking are much more effective than speaking "templates," for example. That's why my students' scores are higher than the scores of students at other schools.


On the other hand, "efficient" refers to things that conserve a resource. Time, money, etc. are limited resources, and anything that saves time or money can be considered "efficient."


Here's an example: I live in Makuhari and work near Tokyo Station. Coming by car or train are equally effective ways of traveling between home and work (unless there is an earthquake and the trains stop. Then a car is more effective). But trains are a more efficient way of traveling to work because they are faster and maybe cheaper.


Please use English well!

Quantity & Quality I

I often hear problems with spend & 過ごす. You can say "楽しい時間を過ごした," but you can not say, "We spent a happy time."


Why? The problem is that "spend" refers to a quantity of time, not a quality of time. Think of it like this: time is a limited resource, and you use/spend that resource on your activities.


So "We spent an hour talking about our favorite movie," is OK; "We spent the whole week lying on the beach," is OK; "I spent my entire life in search of true love," is OK. But "I spent a fun time," is not OK.


If you want to talk about a quality of time (such as fun or happy), then you have to use "have." So "We had a good time," and "We had a fun trip," are fine.

Another common quality/quantity word choice problem is "efficient" and "effective," but I'll save that for a later blog post.


Please use English well!

R-Insertion

Here's a problem we had in class today: r-insertion. It happens when a word ends in a vowel, especially [a] (ア) or [o] （オ）. If your tongue moves from the bottom of your mouth to the middle of your mouth when you say the vowel, it can sound like an "r".


A word like "so" can sound like "sore," "sofa" can sound like "so far," and "idea" can sound like "I dear."


This is a serious problem for some people, and it can change the meaning of what you say, so please learn to use English well!

Alternatives

Much of what I do in class and write about on the blog is corrective feedback, in which there is a pretty objectively correct way to use English, but sometimes you have alternatives.


Take a word like "caramel," as in caramel popcorn. Caramel can be pronounced with either 2 or 3 syllables. You can hear it pronounced here.


Other times, some sounds can be dropped. It seems to me that Japanese people like to say the "t" in "often," but you don't have to say it. I pronounce it "offen" without the "t" in my normal accent. You can hear it here.


So sometimes you can drop a syllable or a sound, and the pronunciation will still be perfectly acceptable.


Please speak English well!

Make a Smiley Face for these guys

The range of motion for the mouth when speaking Japanese is limited. あいうえお and the Japanese 子音 don't demand a lot of movement. Watch 50 year old Japanese guys talk, and you'll see what I mean: many (most?) of them barely move their mouth. In fact, their facial muscles have atrophied to the point where they can't stretch their mouth very far. The older you are, the harder it gets.


This is why I recommended Rebecca's mouth-stretching exercises in my January 25 blog post.

There are two common English sounds you need to really stretch into a smiley face for. One is the [æ] vowel, which is in "cat." The other is [l], especially and "l" sound at the END of a word.

These are two sounds you are going to struggle with. I provide corrective feedback in class, but the gist of it is that you have to move your mouth more when you speak English than when you speak Japanese.

Please speak English well!

Be careful with 場合!

場合 causes problems because it can be translated as "if" and "when," but these have two different meanings. A student recently said, "The university can keep campus clean when it puts more garbage cans on campus," on a task 3 answer.

•  "When" means something will definitely happen in the future.
• "If" is 条件的なこと. So it might happen, or it might not.

The problem in this case is that this idea of putting more trash cans on campus was one of the task 3 speakers suggestions, not a university plan. So "if" is the correct way to express this idea.


Please use English well!

Breathing and airflow

Shallow breathing is a big problem for a lot of people. It affects your pitch, and pronunciation of 摩擦音 and the American "r" sounds. I strongly recommend this video of Rebecca Linquist explaining how to breathe effectively.

HELP!

Not the Beatles' song "Help!" but the 助動詞 "help."

This week a student said, "The game made students understand the concept of time." The problem is the translation of the causal （使役） form to "make."


I'm sure you have read the explanations of "make" and "let," so I'm not going to discuss that. But I will recommend that you use "help" more as a modal verb (助動詞として、"help"　をもっと使うべきです）.


The correct way to express the idea he was trying to express is:

• The game helped the students to understand time.

 Please use English well!

2012 Class Schedule

Time to update the schedule and class information for new students.

Here's the schedule for April/May:

Monday, 7-10 p.m.

Tuesday, 7-10 p.m.

Wednesday, 7-10 p.m.

Saturday, 11:00-14:00 and 3-6 p.m.

Sunday, 11:00-14:00 and 3-6 p.m.

All classes are at the E4TG office in Kyobashi near Tokyo Station. (E4TG is still in Kyobashi, but I plan to move to a bigger office in Yaesu and team-teach with another teacher.)

If you are interested, you can apply from the E4TG.com webpage or below. Please read the Prices and Policies page before applying.

I strongly recommend that you work on your listening skills and vocabulary. If you have strong listening and vocabulary, and pretty clear pronunciation, you should score 23+ on the TOEFL speaking section without too much trouble.

If you would rather apply directly, send me an e-mail with the following information:

1. Please apply from your work e-mail.
2. Name of the person who introduced my classes to you.
3. Employer name
4. MBA? LLM? Other?
5. Do you have company or government sponsorship?
6. What are your top TOEFL scores for Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing sections?
7. Which class is most convenient for you? (see schedule above)
8. Record a two minute answer to this question: "What do you do for fun in your free time?" and attach it to your e-mail. The purpose of the voice sample is to hear you speak so I can provide feedback on your pronunciation.

Dollars or points?

I got positive feedback on the blog post "Enough" and thought I would expand on a common word choice mistake made by students and the Japanese financial media.

It's this: how do you measure the Dow Jones average?


Japanese people seem to think that the Dow Jones is measured in dollars. So for example, they might say, "The Dow was up 50 dollars today."

Wrong. The Dow Jones is measured in POINTS, not dollars. Here's an explanation for those of you who are interested.


The point is the same one I made in Enough: words (in this case numbers) don't always mean what you think they mean. E-J and J-E translation is very difficult so please make sure to understand the meanings of the words you use.

Former Student at Michigan

I just ran across this video from a former student at the 2 year Ross MBA at the University of Michigan. I strongly recommend this. If all Japanese were as motivated and hard-working as Kanayama-san, Japan would be a much more vigorous country!