Evaluation Sheet of Guest Professor Program,Graduate School of Science, Osaka Prefecture University
The following information will be used as a reference material for our evaluation of theprogram. We appreciate your kind cooperation. We appreciate your sending this form by
e-mail to kiriye@mi.s.osakafu-u.ac.jp, Prof. Kouyemon Iriye, Graduate School of Science,
Osaka Prefecture University.
1. If there are comments or advice for the graduate students who took your lecturein “Science Communication”, we appreciate your writing them below.
Graduate students should be more proactive, and should not be afraid to askquestions. To improve their English skills, I would recommend them to read more
research papers in English journals. It would also be beneficial to organize groupmeetings in their research labs, during which they could present the papers they
red to their colleagues (reading clubs).
2. If there are comments or advice for the graduate students of your host professor, weappreciate them.
Graduate students of my host Professor Tanaka are among the best English speakers inthe Physics Department. I was surprised to learn that graduate and undergraduate
students in Prof. Tanaka group listen to the ABC World News every Friday afternoon
during lunch time, and present in English their ideas about selected topics in every
day’s life (e.g. their take on a new Twitter environment). I would encourage them toparticipate in the International Scientific Conferences and Workshops in Japan as well
as abroad to better expose themselves to the English speaking scientific community atlarge.
3. If there are comments or advice for the undergraduate students who took yourlecture, we appreciate them.
In general, listening, reading, writing and speaking must all come together during
the process of mastering a foreign language in order to make it more efficient. If one
or several of these components is missing from everyday practice the remaining
others suffer as well. Also, aside from standard English classes, taught at the highschool and college level, world-wide-web is one of the best sources of English.
YouTube (Google) offers unlimited resources for English learners (world news,learning English through BBC website, etc.) To understand the importance of
foreign languages, young Japanese people should also travel and spend time abroad.
For example, in the audience of 30-35 undergraduate students in Physics
Department only one student have ever been outside of Japan.
4. If there are comments and suggestions for our program, we appreciate them.
I think that the way this program is organized serves the purpose to improve
English communication skills among graduate and undergraduate students in
Osaka Prefecture University. I would recommend that instead of 2 lectures forgraduate students and 2 lectures for undergraduate students (1 hour 15 min each)
there could be 3 lectures for graduate students and 3 lectures for undergraduate
students each 50 min long. I noticed that students get tired right around 50 min
time period, and become rather inactive. I would also recommend that Guest
Professors and students spend some time in a more informal (rather than formalclassroom-like) atmosphere in order to get to know each other, and to makeinteraction more personal. During my multiple interactions with several researchgroups in Physics Department, I have noticed that students, when in small groupsof 3-5 people, are more willing to interact and to speak English compared to when
they are in the classroom.
5. Can we make this sheet open to the public?
Yes.
Name

Valeri Barsegov

Date

11/08/09
Thank you.