Dan Ednie.

Previously I felt like all of the cafes in Japan were only chair stores, like starbucks or Vie le France. But I think I just wasn`t looking hard enough. Rather than the country being not up to my standards, I was just a total outsider, thus I couldn:t find what I was looking for.

この前に渋い喫茶店が見つけなく、日本はスタバとかばっかりだと思った。実際はまじめように見てなかったわけだ。ここは僕の基準にかなわてないことじゃなくて、ただ僕は日本のこと詳しくなかった。そして見つけたいことが見つけなかった。

Except for the milk really yummy.

Very few coffees are made here with the barrista style foam on top. Its a sad reality, and unfortunatly the cost for this kind of coffee is actually higher in real terms than coffee in Australia

残念ながら日本で本物のバリスター的なコーヒーが売ってない。バリスタースタイルがコーヒーの上に泡があるっていう意味だ。そうしても、オーストラリアより、日本のコーヒーが高い。

The atmosphere is really good though - でもふいんきはばっちりだ

Here it is, based at the Center for the Advancement of Higher Education (CAHE) at Tohoku University! I’m so happy to be here, the amount of reading and data collection I’m doing here is exhilarating, and visiting the classes and understanding the life of an academic is truly inspiring.

The department is a mix of native and non-native speakers of English and it produces an annual journal called the Kio. The staff are dedicated to both teaching and research, and the guidance I’ve received so far from the staff so far has been extremely valuable to me. Thank you so much.

Its going to be impossible to fill those shelves with books in the month I’m here, but I’ll try.

Following my participation on the 23rd Ship the World Youth (2011), I founded SWY Microfinance, a lending group of ex-participants. Microfinance consists of lenders in developed countries offering low interest loans to small businesses in developing countries. The loan recipients are able to develop their business, improve the local economy and provide jobs. Lenders receive no interest, but receive their initial capital back, or can relend to the next project. In 2011 SWY Microfinance lent over US$5000 through 188 individual loan contributions. In 2012 the total amount lent is is projected to reach US$20,000! If you are an alumni, of just want to help out anyway, please join.
http://www.kiva.org/team/ship_for_world_youth/
http://www.shipforworldyouth.org/

I want to understand why the conversations that I have with native speakers of Chinese, both in English, in Chinese and mixed, are so different to those I have with Australians. It’s easy to say “different language” and “different culture”. All human communication shares some similarities, and some differences. I want to know what is the same, what is different, and what can be done. This is a short overview, for people interested in my research. I am collecting conversations held between native speakers of Chinese and English and analysing them. Please let me know if you’d like to be a participant.

1. Overview of the study

The period following opening of the Chinese economy to the rest of the world in 1979, has been marked by greater levels of globalisation, migration, international education and cross cultural communication (United Nations Development Program 2009, Kaur 2011, Neuliep 2006). Of particular note has been the economic rise of China (Bergsten et al 2006, Naughton 2007) as well as greater levels of communication between China and the West. These increased interactions, both at a national and person to person level, has brought under the microscope cultural differences between Western and Chinese communication strategies (Young 1990, Xing 2000, Lam 2010). While a number of these studies have sought to describe differences between the expectations of interactions, differences in cultural values and how rapport can be damanged, there is very little research which looks at what can make these conversations successful. This study will seek to identify both successful and unsuccessful styles of Anglo-Sino conversation in terms of the development of rapport.

As English has emerged as the world’s lingua franca (Crystal, 1995; Graddol, 1999; Jenkins Cogo & Dewey, 2011) the majority of conversations between Australians and Chinese speakers occur in English. Over the last three decades the numbers of Chinese students seeking degrees at Australian Universities has grown exponentially from 7,411 in 1999 to 90,908 in 2008 (Guo, 2010), however the difficulties of international student integration have been underlined by the differences between the groups. For Australians and Chinese speakers to be able to communicate effectively, significant research is required in potential threats to rapport, as well as the ways in which rapport is successfully built. This can be observed most clearly through face-to-face conversations. The present paper analyses such conversations through the lens of Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) and specifically draws on Spence-Oatey’s Rapport Management Framework (2000, 2008) to quantify the data.

We’ve only got (perhaps) a hundred years to live. I’ve gotta take the chances while I can – more time, more time.

Dear all!

Thank you so much for such a great Conference!!!!! We trialled a number of new things, and most of them worked out really well. Unfortunatly one of the things we trialled was not promoting the event widely and it backfired somewhat unfortunatley with about a third of the usual number of participoants coming. For the 30 people who did come it was awesome:

I meet a lot of new people, almost too many. I never thought I’d say it, but the amount of access and opportunity I have to speak Chinese or Japanese is actually a problem, rather than something that helps me. Example: Someone I haven’t seen for a long time facebook messages me, asking to catch up for a coffee. I think, yes, I want to see that person, they speak lots of Chinese with me – great. Not great. When I do this for everyone, I end up seeing people max once every two months. The options become:

• Cover less ground linguistically with more people
• Cover more ground linguistically with a select number of language partners