HEY FRIENDS so I'll make this short BUT

so I'm a grad student in TESOL/AL which is a really long acronym but basically ESL yeah you know. I think you all know this!!

and my thesis is probably going to have to do with learner motivation specifically wrt language learning via social media

ANNNND I would really love your help!

SO. If you are someone for whom English is not your first language and you believe using social media (this could be LiveJournal, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter . . . anything really, actually I'll take any kind of internet-based communication?? lol. Like email or forums or whatever) has been IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY advantageous to your English language learning, I would love to use you (in the good way!!) in a study.

Probably it wouldn't involve too terribly much work from you? I'm still ironing out the details but I'm about ready to embark on a preliminary study, which would probably mostly involve you filling out some questionnaires for me/allowing me to observe/collect data on some of your online interactions.

And seriously, this is if you think online interactions have been a part of your English growth in any way, even if that has less to do with learning grammar, structure, vocabulary, etc. and more to do with increasing your interest/frequency in communicating in English, or just giving you a new community/new types of discourse in which to communicate in English!

If this sounds like something you would be amenable to doing, I'd love to talk to you and give you some further details :) Please email me! At longleggedgit(at)gmail(dot)com.

THANKS FRIENDS I LOVE YOU ALL

So today I started nannying! It was awesome and I'm already sure I'm going to have a super fun summer and really enjoy the kids. There are three, and the oldest has Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which means he's pretty severely physically disabled. He was wearing some Superman accessories so I asked if he liked Superman, and it came out that the reason they were really interested in him was because Christopher Reeve was physically disabled by the end of his life. And then I started thinking about superheroes with disabilities and wondering how many are out there? They were really interested when I told them there are a few. I was thinking of Professor Xavier, for example, and Daredevil (I don't know much about him beyond his terrible movie, unfortunately), but I was wondering how many others exist?

I think many of you are more into comics and superhero fandoms than I, so if you know any superheroes with disabilities you can fill me in on, please let me know! I think it'd be especially good for him to learn more about ones like Xavier who are in wheelchairs or have otherwise limited mobility/physical strength.

I'm gonna leave this unlocked in case people have friends they can refer over here or whatnot.

Thanks all!

Mostly minor, but I'm hoping now that I'm not working for hell I can actually start to keep up with my flist again, so. In attempting to do so, I'm cutting dead journals and some journals I just haven't communicated with in forever. (I realize this lack of communication is 99.99% my fault, so if I cut you and you would like to talk about it, you can PM me or comments are screened.) No hard feelings whatsoever, just doing some housecleaning, like I said. ♥

I don't want to talk too much about my experience with the Japan earthquake, because there are tens of thousands of people whose experiences make mine look like a romp through the playground, just for starters, and because I have seen more than a handful of foreigners in Japan take this as an opportunity to engage in some pretty attention-seeking behavior. But I do want to talk a little bit about my experiences in the country post-earthquake, because they've been incredibly heartening.

Immediately after getting evacuated from the museum we were in, innumerable Japanese people--employees of the museum and customers alike--continually sought my father and I out to make sure we were okay and we understood what was going on. This selflessness was really touching to me; a lot of these people had small children and families with them, and you would think in a time of crisis they would just be focused on their own family unit's well-being, but they were all thinking of us.

When my father and I were stranded in Mitaka, trying to find a way out or a place to stay, we encountered, in turns: an old woman offering us heated hand-warmers to keep ourselves warm in the cold; several different people offering to personally accompany us to a shelter so we wouldn't get lost; a cab driver who cut our three-hour ride's fare short with half an hour to go. (It still cost us $200, though, ha.)

Every day, on every major street corner and at every shopping mall, elementary, middle, and high school students are standing in their uniforms politely asking for donations for victims. In the hostels I've been staying in, there are signs about turning off the lights to save power for victims in Miyagi and Sendai, and in restaurants I've gone to, they apologize profusely because they've turned off the heat for the same reason.

After I saw my dad off to the Narita airport, I was in a couple aftershocks underground waiting for a train and then on the train itself. I was stupidly freaked out even though they weren't so bad, but all I had to do was look around me and I calmed immediately. All the Japanese people were taking it in without fear, completely brave and calm. I feel like that's how the country has been throughout this entire crisis. The Japan I'm seeing looks nothing like the western news reports on TV. It's maybe the most inspiring historical event I've ever sorta kinda witnessed, as terrible as it all is.

I say this primarily because donations for Japan have been really low in comparison with other recent worldwide crises. A lot of aid organizations have even stopped accepting donations directly for victims in Japan. I've read a lot of justifications for this, but I don't really want to go into the politics of it. I just want to say: there are a lot of people in this country who have lost their families and lost their homes and are facing it with awe-inspiring grace. If you can spare even a couple dollars for one of the aid organizations focusing on Japan, it makes a difference.

I know my flist is full of amazing and generous people, so to be honest, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here. But it had to be said. To those of you who have already donated (or are offering services or bidding over at help_japan), thank you. ♥

So I'm about to teach an article about a sort of institutionalized hierarchy of racism in a North Carolina slaughterhouse, and I was wondering how it would be best to proceed regarding some of the racist terminology in the article. It's got some pretty incendiary language, including the n-word among many others. The student who I'll be teaching is very mature--he's a high schooler, obviously pretty fluent in English, and he's actually the one who first brought up race relations in the U.S. to me, so I thought the article was appropriate. Still, I'm concerned about bringing words like these into class, partially just because I think it might be hard to convey to someone who did not grow up in the U.S., where racist slang has so much history behind it, how serious it is to use them.

When I was in college I took an African American lit course, and the professor told us he wanted us to say the n-word and any other offensive terms when reading out loud, provided we felt comfortable doing so, because it was important to the context of the work and really brought the importance of the text home. Right now I'm leaning toward taking a similar approach with my student--first by going over what the terminology is and what it means, and then by telling him that as long as he feels comfortable saying it, he should read it within the context of the article--but I'm looking for outside opinions. I would especially like to hear what you have to say if you are/were once a teacher, and especially especially if you've had experience teaching texts with racist terminology within them, but honestly I'd love to hear anyone's opinions on the matter.

I'm going to leave this post open just in case someone feels like linking a very experienced teacher friend to it, haha.

ETA: Probably should've made this clearer since I made this open to the public: I'm living in Japan teaching English as a second language, so not in the U.S. However, the student in question has an extremely high English speaking and comprehension ability.

So recently I read a book (a rarity with the amount of free time I have) called Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. And it was AWESOME. It's written by two Pulitzer-winning journalists, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (the latter once appeared on Colbert!), and it's phenomenal. Largely, what it's about is sex trafficking, Female Genital Mutilation, unnecessarily high maternal mortality rates, domestic abuse, and other injustices toward women, mostly in developing countries. Sounds really uplifting, I know, but it actually kind of is. The focus of the book isn't just recounting horrifying individual stories (although it does that, and here's your fair warning, a lot of them are really horrifying); it's about recounting stories of women who overcame the most horrific obstacles imaginable, who survived against great odds and did amazing things, for themselves and their families and communities.

This book is really inspiring. I felt good about myself after reading it. I felt good about all sorts of other people in the world, too. And the best part is, it not only tells you about how other people rose above tremendous odds and made things better, it tells you precisely the best ways you can do something to help.

A lot of the things they recommend involve a little money, but not even remotely all of them. I'm not going to write up a list recounting what in this book I think you should take away, because I'm serious when I say I want you all to go read it, now. Go to the nearest bookstore or order it via your preferred online book seller. You won't be sorry. But I do want to tell you about one program it introduced me to that I'm REALLY excited about.

It's called Kiva.org, and the purpose of the website is to provide loans to people in poverty-stricken communities the world over so they can start/improve their own businesses and get out of debt. There are two things I think are especially awesome about this program: 1) You can contribute with a loan as small as $25. So, so easy, guys. That's like, a little splurge at a restaurant on a Saturday night. And 2) You eventually get paid back your money, and you can then choose to either take it or loan it to another project, which I think is way way awesome. If you donate $200, then it gets paid back and you donate again, then it gets paid back, etc. etc., it's like. It's like you get to KEEP HELPING PEOPLE FOREVER AND EVER with the same exact $200 you first contributed! I JUST FIND THAT SO INCREDIBLY COOL.

So. Now I'm sponsoring a group of women in Uganda who run their own bar. I'm just a partial sponsor--most loans are made by several loaners collaboratively--but it feels so incredibly awesome! I love this idea, I love this website, and I love this book.

Seriously, guys, I can't give it enough praise. Please, please read it, because it will inspire you to do wonderful things. Also, if you're at all like me and prone to a little self-pity, it will give you a swift kick in the pants to remind you just how good you have it.

Title: One Love
Rating: G
Pairing: TezuRyo
Notes: For cmere and help_haiti!

( That's a tennis pun, get it?Collapse )

Next up, Holmes/Watson fic for reallycorking!

Hey guys :)

Don't forget, bidding at help_haiti ends today at noon EST! God, seeing just about everyone on my flist engaging in this in one way or another makes me feel extremely proud and warm and fuzzy inside. ♥ FANDOM ♥

My threads:

One ficlet (1500 words or less) offered here.

One drawble (digital or hand-drawn and inked lineart) offered here.

I was reading a little old-school Dykes to Watch Out For the other day, which is one of my favorite comic strips, and one of the comics really got to me. One character suggested they take in a movie, and the other enlightened her to the three rules she applies to movies she wants to see. They have to:

1) Have at least two female characters, who

2) Interact with each other at some point throughout the course of the film, and

3) Have a conversation about something other than a man.

It didn't sound that unreasonable to me at first, and then I got to thinking. Sherlock Holmes? Out. Up? Out. Star Trek? Out. (Okay, Uhura and Gaila start talking about something else, but it devolves into talking about a man. Also, they're in their freaking underwear.) Possibly every single Lord of the Rings film? Out. Most of the Harry Potter films are out. Master and Commander is out. I think Jurassic Park is out. Just about every Disney or Pixar movie ever is out.

In the strip, the character explaining her set of rules said, "The last movie I let myself see was Alien. The two women have a conversation about the monster." I think the last movie I saw that fit these criteria was Julie & Julia. And actually, that one might only sneak by because she has some phone conversations about cooking with her mom.

It's interesting to me because more than half my favorite films (and books!) don't fit the guidelines, and I've never really thought about it in those terms before. Obviously I've recognized that LotR and Harry Potter and Star Trek don't boast a ton of female characters (HP would be the best of the lot), but these are the rule, not the exception. If you take these criteria and apply them to characters of color or characters of non-hetero sexualities/non-traditional gender identities, the outlook becomes even more grim. I'm not even trying to make a point here, really, other than that the realization surprised me a little. Maybe it shouldn't have and I was just being naïve, haha, but there it is. And I'm certainly not saying that in light of this realization I am going to stop loving these things so near and dear to my heart. It just makes me look at them a little differently, and makes me want to look at the films I'm going to see, and the expectations I have for them, in a new light.

What was the last film you saw that met these guidelines?

ETA: marksykins has directed me to a handy-dandy list of movies that fit the Bechdel bill. Thank you, Marks! Thank you, internet!

ETA THE SECOND: lisztful informs me that over on DreamWidth, there is a community devoted to discussing the Bechdel test! In case you aren't getting your fill here. :)