LEARNING LEARNING 

Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017“ＬＤＳＩＧメンバーの声”

MEMBERS’ VOICESLD SIG Members' Voices offers spaces for
SIG members to introduce themselves toother members of the SIG in a variety ofaccessible and personalised text formats andlengths:• a short personal profile of yourself as alearner and teacher (100-200 words or so)• a short critical reflection on your history asa (language) learner at (a) particular stage(s)in your life (around 200-500 words)• a story of your ongoing interest in, andengagement with, particular learnerdevelopment (and/ or learner autonomy)
issues (around 500-800 words)• a short profile of your learnerdevelopment research interests and how you
hope to develop your research (around 500800 words)• a short profile of your working context
and the focus on learner development that a
particular institution where you work takes
and/or is trying to develop (about 800-1200
words)• some other piece of writing that you
would like to contribute and that is related
to learner development.
Many thanks to the following new membersof the Learner Development SIG in 2016
for sharing their voices with readers of
Learning Learning. We hope other SIG
members will also contribute their voices tothe next issue of Learning Learning. If you areinterested in doing so, please contact theMembers' Voices coordinator, Andy
Barfield, barfield.andy@gmail.com.

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ＳＩＧ会員の皆様に多様な形式・文体・長さで、ご自身の考えや活動をご紹介していただくためスペースです。
以下のような様々な声を募集しております。
• ご自身の学習者および教育者として
プロフィール。（約 100-200 語）• ご自身の（語学）学習者として経験
で、特定の段階における逸話の省察。
（約 200-500 語）• ご自身の現在の取組みおよび関心を寄せていることで、特に学習者ディベ
ロプメント（また学習者オートノ
500-800ミー）に関するもの。（約語）• 学習者ディベロプメントに関するご自身の研究内容の概要と方向性。（約500-800 語）• 勤務先の教育環境の紹介や学習者
ディベロプメントに関する取り組み。
（約 800-1200 語）• その他、学習者ディベロプメントに関する内容。
２０１6 年学習者ディベロプメント研
究部会に入会され、今号で『学習の学習』の読者に様々な声を共有していた
だいたSIG会員の皆様に感謝申し上げます。

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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

Why Do I Learn andTeach English?
Mina Hirano
Adjunct Lecturer, Nanzan
UniversityM

y path as an English learnersomehow started in Mongolia
when I was thirteen. It was mydream to visit there ever since I
saw a picture of a Mongolian nomad boy,riding a horse in the ocean-like grassland
under the blue sky. Until I visited there for ashort homestay at a local traditional family’s
ger as my first trip abroad, I wasn’t so happy
about learning English at school. I wanted
to study something really new to me such as
Mongolian or Chinese, but I had to study
the same language as everybody else due tothe school system. However, when I
encountered people with a different
language and culture for the first time underthe beautiful Mongolian blue sky, I was
fascinated by communicating over andbetween different cultures and languages.
The local people didn’t speak English so I
talked with them in broken Mongolian and alittle Japanese, and, for some reason, I
developed my English a little bit. At thatpoint, my motivation towards learning
English suddenly grew as I wished so hard,“I want to make friends all over the world!
Therefore, I must learn English first!” Thatwish led me to study at a local high school
in California for a year when I was 15 years
old and at the University of Oregon for six
months four years later.
My second turning point was when I went
back to university after working for a while
as an English tutor and also a caregiver forchildren with autistic behavior, in order to
get a junior and senior high school English
teacher’s license. One professor asked,“Why do you want to teach English?”
I tried to explain how learning English
broadened my perspective and the world sothat I wanted my future students to be able
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to have the same experience as me. He was
not content with my answer and said, “Youmust find a concrete reason why you teachEnglish that makes sense for every single
student in Japan.” Since then, I started tolook for my answer to that question.
When I entered graduate school in 2014 to
do a Master’s in Linguistics, my learner
identity broadened further and I started to
explore the world of research using English.
My first small qualitative research project
was about English learners’ identity. I neverforget how one of my participants described
her identity as an English learner. Although
she was Japanese (an English teacher andalso a graduate school student back then), I
interviewed her in English. She commented,“Learning
Englishbroadenedmypersonality and the way of thinking. It’s likeyou have more colorful clothes in yourdresser. Before you learn English, it was
only white and black. But now I havecolorful dresses in my dresser.”She told me that she used to be reserved
and sometimes timid to express her
opinions and feelings among Japanesepeople before she learned English. However,as she started to use English and madeforeign friends, she realized that it isessential to show her thoughts and feelings
when communicating with people in
English. As she did this, she began to enjoy
expressing herself in this way. At the sametime, she could keep more reserved way ofcommunication with her Japanese friends. It
was fascinating for me to gain confirmationfrom another that that learning English
could expand a learner’s identity.
For my Master’s dissertation, I investigated
how and what kinds of assistance were
provided between 16 low proficiency highschool learners and their teacher in a natural
EFL classroom setting, using a sociocultural
framework. It was a 2-year case study, andmy participants belonged to the bottom
class of three English classes according totheir proficiency levels. I wanted to explore
what was happening in that class becauseeven though the majority of the learners
were having difficulty in learning generally

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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

and some had learning disorders, there was amarked sense of mutual assistance and afamily-like atmosphere between the people
in that class. As a result, I found out thatparticipant learners made up for theirpersonal limitation of English proficiency
and knowledge by collective scaffolding. For
example, if one of the members of the small
group didn’t know how to solve English
grammatical drills, one started to explain thegrammar first, then, when that person was ata loss for words due to lack of knowledge or
confidence, the other member naturally took
over. And if the second explainer made a
mistake while explaining, the third member
would assist the explainer’s self-correction.
This kind of collective scaffolding was often
triggered by the teacher’s mediation, but
how and when to assist each otherdepended on learners. Through this researchstudy, I learned when and how learners can
succeed in assisting to each other and how
significant the teacher’s role is to facilitatethat happened. It was also a good
opportunity for me to get to know myparticipants’ version of the answer to thequestion, “Why do you study English?”After I finished my master’s degree, I started
my career as an English lecturer at university
last April. As I teach, I feel I really need toknow the answer to that question, especiallywhen I found out that the majority of mystudents have a sense of inferiority as
English learners. And this question has also
led me to my current research interest in
learner’s identity. I’d like to finish my long
self-introduction (thank you so much foryour time and patience!) by quoting
Professor Noam Chomsky, who gave me agreat hint to the question, “Why do I teachEnglish?” I had the privilege to ask him thisquestion when he gave a lecture at Sophia
University in 2014. I asked Chomsky mainly
about the role of language. Then he calmly
and positively responded, “Language is likea hammer. You can use it to build a house,or hit somebody in the head. It depends on
our determination.”
So, why do I learn and teach English? For
now, my answer to that question is to teachSPRING 2017

learners that we learn and use language notsimply to pursue a successful career, but also
to construct a house where every person,with their different cultures, thoughts andcolors, can live together harmoniously. I’mlooking forward to hearing your answers as
to why you also learn or teach English!
Author correspondence:<Email> mina.1192000@gmail.com

Do You Remember
the First Time …

Robb J.Y. Lee

Hiroshima University

Aloha and Hauʻoli kēia hui ʻana o kāua
(It is pleasure to meet you). I wasborn and raised in Honolulu,
Hawaii. I am currently enrolled andworking on my Master’s degree incurriculum and education at Hiroshima
University. It is a great pleasure and honor
to be a new member of JALT and the
Learner Development SIG and to also
connect with all of you through Members’
Voices. The reason why I joined JALT and
the LD SIG is that it’s my mission to learn
about new teaching methodologies,
technologies and new ways of think to
education and English education inparticular. As the saying goes, “Seek tounderstand, then to be understood.”
If I may begin by asking you, do you
remember the first time you saw the ocean?
Do you remember the smell of the ocean or
the sound of waves crashing on the shore?
How about the feeling of fear andexcitement as you were about to kick yourslippers off and jump in? After a bit ofhesitation and self-deliberation, you take theplunge and your brain begins firing and

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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

creating new synapses to record thisexperience. You realize that the water issalty to your tongue, and that this vast bodyof water really is not a lake or river. It
actually stretches way beyond the limits ofyour comprehension.
As a master’s student at Hiroshima
University’s
Graduate
SchoolofInternational Development and Economic
Cooperation (IDEC), you could say that I
have been blessed with the opportunity tomeet amazing people from all over the
globe. In a strange twist of fate, I crossed
paths with such a gentleman from Rwanda
as I was going to pick up my application for
the University. I introduced myself to him
and struck up a conversation about where
he was from and why he was studying in
Hiroshima. As we departed ways and said
our goodbyes, I thought that this was theend of the encounter and I would never see
him again. Not a week later, this fellow from
Rwanda was standing in front of my housewith my wife introducing him to mychildren and father-in-law. Oddly enough hewas sent on a 1-2 day homestay with aJapanese family, and it happened to be withmy family.
Life never ceases to amaze me and this was
no exception. Fate literally brought him to
my doorstep and two months later, we
decided to take him to see and go swimmingin the ocean for the very first time in his life.
It was a very deep and powerful moment forthe both of us because he had never seen
the ocean before and I had never met
someone his age who had never been in theocean. We were beside ourselves withabsolute joy and wonderment.

Kolb succinctly noted in his proposal of theExperiential Learning Theory (ELT) that:“Learning is the process whereby
knowledge is created through thetransformationofexperience.
Knowledge results from the combinationof grasping and transforming experience”(Kolb, 1984).
In many ways, I am quite similar to my
Rwandan friend in that I am immersing
myself in the ocean of graduate studies at
Hiroshima University. I hope to learn morein detail about international education in thecontext of Japan and the interculturalcompetency levels of domestic Japanese
university students. My main researchinterest is in the area of intercultural
exchanges that occur between domestic andinternational students and how theseexchanges are transformative with regards toEnglish ability and intercultural competency.
I hope to meet, talk, learn and connect withyou in the near future. Thank you verymuch and Mahalo Nui Loa.
Reference
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning:Experience as the source of learning and development(Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Retrieved fromhttp://www.nwlink.com/~%E2%80%89do
nClark/hrd/styles/kolb.html

Author correspondence:<Email> mindfulness808@gmx.com

It reminded me of the little things we often
take for granted in our busy world, that eventhe most mundane of experiences can lead
us down the path of our greatest learning.
Also, as teachers and educators, we have theresponsibility to create the opportunities andconditions that facilitate learning for ourstudents. We are the bridge that connects
the educational needs of our students to theknowledge and experiences that lead tohigher levels of self-discovery and learning.
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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

“Sensei, my major
has nothing to dowith English.”take any elective English classes. Theirdecisions must be respected, but is learning
English really a hindrance to becoming aproperly qualified health professional?

Michiyo Masui

Under these limited circumstances, studying
English has to be meaningful for each
student. I have been seeking for answers to
the following questions: “What is my role asa university teacher?”, “What can I sharewith my students as a learner?”, and “Howcan I link the isolated English subject withother studies so that the students cancontinue studying English?”Tohoku
Bunka
University

GakuenHello everyone. My name is Michiyo
Masui. I’ve been working as an
English teacher for nearly 20 years.
I started teaching young learners aged from
3 to 12 and switched my teaching settings touniversity a few years later. Now I work for
Tohoku Bunka Gakuen University in Sendai,
Miyagi, and mainly teach “compulsory”
English classes to non-English majors.
Many of my students study health services
and rehabilitation and are hoping to work as
nurses, physical therapists, occupational
therapists, speech therapists, and orthoptists
in the future. The rest of the students makea special study of social sciences such as
economics, politics, law and economics, etc.
English is one of the liberal arts subjects
that the students must take in their first year
at the university.
Over the past few years, I’ve been having
difficulty in dealing with students who haveno willingness and interest towards learning
English. They say things like:I have not found robust answers to thequestions, but I would like to tell mystudents that acquiring English will expand
their opportunities and help them choose
what they really want to do in the future. In
order to come to more criticalunderstanding of these issues, I joined the
Learner Development SIG. I hope to gain
new knowledge and ideas to develop mystudents’ learner autonomy and lookforward to meeting and talking with LD
SIG members at conferences and otherevents in the future.
Author correspondence:<Email> mmasui@pm.tbgu.ac.jp• “English isn’t important in my future
career.”• “It’s fine not to be able to speak
English in Japan.”• “English isn’t necessary to pass anursing national exam.”
It is not easy to change their negative
feelings and low self-confidence towards
learning English, which have beendeveloped over many years. In addition, themajority of my students stop taking English
classes by the end of their junior year inorder to start their job-related specializedstudies. Sadly, some students and teachers
claim that English should be an elective
subject, and those students probably will not
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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

Perceived SelfEfficacy: Building
the Confidence to
Speak
Diane Jacob
Osaka English VillageAstrong influence on the principles
that guide my approach to teaching
English is my own experience inlearning and using languages. For many
years, I studied French. When I was in the
fourth grade, my mother enrolled me in an
early morning, extracurricular French class,and I continued studying French up until I
graduated university with a B.A. in French
Language and Literature. However, for the
majority of these years of study, I was
unable to use it functionally. That is, until
my third year of university when I enrolled
in a study abroad program in Paris and was
pushed to speak. From then on, I was able
to make more sense of the relationshipbetween form and meaning, andfurthermore, I became more confident andmotivated to learn. As a result of my own
experiences with French, I am especiallyinterested in encouraging students to put
effort into speaking in their second language(L2). Be that as it may, I find that it is notalways easy for students to produce speech.
Various factors can influence a student’s
motivation and willingness to communicate.
These factors include perceived self-efficacy,
a construct related to self-confidence that I
find has been influential in my own learning
behavior and therefore could be applicable
to my students as well.
Of course, I have not been the only person
to notice the importance of output. In 1985,
Merrill Swain observed that L2 students in
French immersion programs, while highly
fluent, were not developing a native-likespeaking proficiency, despite receiving
plenty of comprehensible input (Swain,1985). She argued that students were unable
to develop this proficiency because students
were not required to produce language at
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native-level complexity. According to
Swain’s (1995) output hypothesis, output
serves three functions that shift focus fromsemantic processing to syntactic processing:noticing, hypothesis-testing, and metalinguistic
processing. Output also serves to develop
fluency, which is a characteristic ofautomaticity that supports a functional useof the L2.
In support of this theory, I have found thatmy language proficiency has developed as aresult of producing meaningful output. For
example, in a conversation with a Japanesecolleague, I wanted to say, “I think ____ ismore ____ than ____,” but was unable toformulate the sentence. This prompted me
to seek out the appropriate linguisticknowledge, whereupon learning the relevant
forms, I proceeded to try my new
knowledge in other conversations. As aresult of this and other experiences, I havedeveloped a functional use of Japanese,
despite not having the time to devote toproper studying. The role that output plays
in language development is therefore
significant.
That being said, I still find that speaking
often seems to be the language skill that L2
students struggle with the most. Output
involves different, often less practiced
cognitive processes than does processing
input. Furthermore, speaking involves ahigher risk of losing face. In the face of
these difficulties, I have looked towards
motivation to encourage students tocontinue in their efforts to speak. In my
research into factors that can influence
motivation, perceived self-efficacy has proven to
be an interesting issue.
Bandura (1986) defined perceived selfefficacy (PSE) as a “set of self-referent
judgments arrived at through cognitive
processing of diverse sources of efficacy
information” (p. 362). In other words, PSE
is what an individual thinks he can or cannot
do, regardless of actual ability. Learners
form these beliefs based on social-comparative
information (“He can do it, so can I!”), social
persuasion (“You say I can do it? OK!”), direct
mastery experiences (“I did it before, I can do it

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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

again!”), and physiological responses (“I feelextremely anxious, I cannot do it!”). In L2
acquisition, these perceptions can influence
whether or not students participate inpositive learning behavior, such as willinglyand earnestly participating in exercises
designed to elicit meaningful speaking
practice.
Although helping my students achieve acertain level of language proficiency isimportant, I have found that I should also
consider the development of students’
perceived self-efficacy. I became interested
in PSE through research into factors
influencing students’ willingness to produce
output; however, perceived self-efficacy is
an important concept in many areas of L2
acquisition. I have heard a student say manytimes, “I’m just not good at languages.”Though this statement paints the issue inbroad strokes, it stems from a low
perception of self-efficacy. A final point that
I would like to highlight about PSE is that it
is task and domain specific. A student canhave high speaking PSE when conversing
with friends but have low speaking PSE
when it comes to addressing the class as awhole. Also, a student can have highlistening PSE but low speaking PSE. Whena student claims not to be good at languages,
it can be worthwhile to pinpoint the reason
for this statement.
In sum, in order to encourage better
learning habits and build motivation, I am
interested in approaches that can positively
influence students’ perceived self-efficacy.
How a student perceives his or hercompetence can affect behavior andmotivation.
Furthermore,
motivation,
potentially more so than aptitude, can be astrong predictor for successful language
development and acquisition. Therefore, I
believe that PSE is a construct that warrants
further research in how it relates to learnerdevelopment in second language acquisition.
References
Bandura, A. (1986). The explanatory andpredictive scope of self-efficacy theory.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 4(3),359-373.
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Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence:
Some roles of comprehensible input andcomprehensible output in its development.
In S. Gass & C. Madden (Eds.), Input in second
language acquisition (pp. 235-253). Rowley, MA:
Newbury House.
Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output insecond language learning. In G. Cook & B.
Seidelhofer (Eds.), Principle and practice inapplied linguistics: Studies in honour of H.G.
Widdowson (pp. 125-144). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Author correspondence:<Email> diane.jacob@englishvillage.co.jp

A Storm in a
Booth - Learner
Autonomy inJapanese andeikaiwa
Daniel HooperHi everyone, my name is Daniel
Hooper and I recently started
working as a lecturer in the English
Language Institute (ELI) at Kanda
University of International Studies in April.
I have been teaching in Japan for ten years
with much of that time spent working ineikaiwa schools. I joined the Learner
Development SIG last year and have foundit to be a warm and welcoming group ofpeople who are earnestly trying to foster
student development. Hopefully this shortstory will serve as a cheery “hello” to otherLD SIG members from someone who was
greatly shaped by learner autonomy, andwho later fought to promote it in eikaiwa
schools.
I guess a decent metaphor for my initial
relationshipwithlanguagelearning
autonomy would be a driftwood raft inshark infested waters. It wasn’t pretty:
shoddily put together and lacking

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12LEARNING LEARNING 

Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017engineering know-how but sturdy andbuoyant enough to stop me becoming
lunch. Left to fend for myself in rural
Saitama, my first foray into self-directed
learning stemmed from necessity rather than
any intellectual belief in concepts like“learner autonomy,” mainly because I wasn’t
aware that such ideas existed. The attractive
notion that I would simply “soak thelanguage up over time” quickly evaporated
as I met a number of other teachers who
had been deftly evaded by Japanesecompetence despite living here for around a
decade. Without any deliberate attempt tostudy the language many still needed to pullout the “look angry and speak loudly inEnglish”
approachwheneverthey
encountered a communicative hurdle. At adiminutive 165 centimeters tall, I thought I
had better prepare a backup plan to theintimidation card and so got out the
textbooks.
But they weren’t really working for me.
Neither were online classes that I started
taking in 2009, where essentially I was
guided through another textbook filled with“textbooky” sentences of tennis games in
the park, the exploits of “Taro” and “Ken,”and missed buses that failed to either
stimulate me or take root in my brain. In theend, I felt I wasn’t getting enough bang formy buck and instead opted for the more
economic option of a library card. I started
borrowing children’s books on a range of
topics (usually in the afternoon when kids
were in school, as I felt less creepy as a 30year-old man thumbing through books on
dinosaurs and bullet trains). Reading books
in Japanese was a valuable experience forme as it both increased my linguisticknowledge and allowed me to regain thechildlike curiosity I felt as a kid in the village
library where my mother worked,
surrounded by unfamiliar and exciting
words and pictures. These experiencesmotivated me to eventually strive to create
more opportunities related to personalized
and autonomous learning for my students ineikaiwa.

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Later, as an eikaiwa instructor I was put incharge of the same textbooky language that
had failed to invigorate my own language
studies and began to see myself in thestudents who sat in the clinical-looking
cubicles for the same 40-minute stretch eachweek. Just as with my experience, I failed inmany cases to register any real linguistic
development in students as they stumbled
through the “Complaining at a hotel” roleplay that they had done eight times before,
but would in all likelihood never have a usefor outside of our grey little booth.
Eventually, I began to offer graded readers
to my students for out-of-class study. Thiswas followed by spaced repetition flash card
applications and websites featuring gradednews articles. I was excited about my job for
the first time in years.
But then… a blip. That was all. The
students didn’t seem interested. But why? I
had read all of the studies, attended theseminars, shown enthusiasm, and offeredsupport. Why wouldn’t students want to use
free materials? Weren’t they paying forclasses? They should be motivated,shouldn’t they? I was desperate tounderstand. I read articles on everything I
could find about eikaiwa, on Charisma Men(Bailey, 2007), educational fad-dieting(Sapunaru-Tamas & Tamas, 2012), andleisure and consumption (Kubota, 2011). I
also was intrigued that other attempts todevelop learner autonomy, much like mine,
often fell disappointingly flat (Makino, 2016;
Shigeo-Brown, 2005).
Since then, I have continued to pushonwards in my mission of promoting outof-class study in a world I feel constantly
undulates between promise and futility. My
relationship with the eikaiwa industry has
been at times stormy, at times almost
oppressively calm, but always with the hopethat things can be better. The conversation
school industry is, in many ways, almost
untouched by academic inquiry. This isperhaps partly due to a lack of “researchers”
working in eikaiwa and partly because of thebad “McEnglish” (McNeill, 2004) reputationthat these schools have both deservedly and

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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

undeservedly made for themselves. I see thisboth as an opportunity (selfishly as a
researcher) and a desperate problem (assomeone who watched students’ moneychange hands week after week). The daily
ups and downs of my eikaiwa classrooms aswell as the research on eikaiwa that I
discovered later in my career have often
given me more questions to consider rather
than settling old ones. Eikaiwa is a puzzle
that I sometimes feel stubbornly does notwant to be solved. However, over the years,
I have met students who have inspired me
and convinced me that they deserve better
than “one size fits all.” Maybe for that
simple reason alone, I have grown to believethat the world of eikaiwa and the promotionof learner autonomy within it is somethingthat deserves my time and effort in the years
to come.

Sapunaru-Tamas, C., & Tamas, A. (2012). The
eikaiwa phenomenon in Japan or the threeday magic formula: between marketing andlanguage acquisition.
[Osaka ElectroCommunication University Human Science
Research], 14, 95-106.

Author correspondence:<Email> tywardreathdan@gmail.com

It's Good to Be
the Jack

References

Mark Pileggi

Bailey, K. (2007). Akogare, ideology, and'Charisma Man' mythology: Reflections on
ethnographic research in English language
schools in Japan. Gender, Place and Culture,
14(5), 585-608.
Brown, P. S. (2005). Elements of learner training
and learning strategies in a Japanese eikaiwa(private language school). Unpublished MA
TEFL/TESL assignment. Birmingham, UK:
Centre for English Language Studies,
University of Birmingham. Retrieved fromhttp://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/collegeartslaw/cels/essays/secondlanguage/Brown
1.pdf
Kubota, R. (2011). Learning a foreign language
as leisure and consumption: enjoyment,
desire, and the business of eikaiwa.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and
Bilingualism, 14(4), 473-488.
Makino, M. (2016, June 6). Success and failure,pt. 2 - Blended learning, mixed results [Blogpost].
Retrievedfromhttps://futurealisreal.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/success-and-failure-pt-2-blendedlearning-mixed-results/
McNeill, D. (2004, February 24). McEnglish forthe masses. The Japan Times. Retrieved fromhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2004/02/24/issues/mcenglish-for-themasses/#.VuNf5OYwDw8

Kobe City College ofTechnology

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hat do the words skateboarding,DJ, interpreting, Aikido, wedding
pastor, surfing, Bikkurimark, father,
associate professor, snowboarding, and
MegaBikk all have in common?
Well, I suppose the only answer could be,
me. I was a happy child raised in a Christianhome, the younger brother with a flair foradventure. A lack of focus on any one thing
led me to try a little of everything. While I
like team sports, I’m happiest riding
sideways on any type of board. My studies
were broad and Bikkurimark is my identity
as a computer graphic designer, which iswhat I graduated from the University ofCentral Florida with, back in 1997.
However, a love for interaction with people
led me to become a teacher instead. From
the Eastern seaboard of the United States toJapan as a JET working for MEXT I landed
in Matsuyama, Ehime, right after university.
Living in Ehime was a great chance to learn
Japanese, and, while studying the language, I
also took up DJing, which began mostly to
avoid keeping up with my best friend from

MEMBERS’ VOICES14LEARNING LEARNING 

Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

Ireland’s drinking pace. Life in Ehime gaveme time to learn written Japanese at workand long road trips with surfers notinterested in learning English helped my
spoken Japanese immensely. I got married
to a lovely Japanese girl from Matsuyama,
and we started out as newlyweds by moving
to Osaka. I began helping at church and wasinterpreting there, I trained to get aminister's license and I also began marrying
Japanese couples.
Why Japan? Well, I traced it back to being
mugged for my candy as a child one
Halloween in Massachusetts where I grew
up. That was the reason for me wanting tolearn martial arts to defend myself. It was
the defining moment that my interest in
Asia was born. That never went away, and I
now have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do anda 3rd degree black belt in Aikido thanks tothose misguided high school kids that
attacked my older brother and myself.
While working at Osaka Gakuin University's
I-Chat Lounge, I was able to take an online
Masterof
Sciencein
Education
specialization in Curriculum, Instruction andTechnology from Nova Southeastern
University (NSU) in Florida. I now work at
Kobe City College of Technology and teachEnglish communication and TOEIC classes
as a full-time associate professor full time. I
love it there, and, while I’m not an engineer
myself, all the brotherly bonding time spentplaying video games growing up became
valuable experiences that now allow me tohold friendly conversations on tech-related
subjects and join students on occasion for
online fun, usually under the alias of
MegaBikk.

SPRING 2017

If there is a point to this chaotic story ofmine, it’s that no matter how trivial orseemingly negative an event or hobby may
be to others, if you keep a positive way of
thinking, all of those things can give you
individuality and strengths in a combinationthat nobody else could duplicate. So to all
the “Liberal Arts” majors out there, “There ishope!”Mark
Jack of all Trades
Author correspondence:<Email> bikkurimark2004@gmail.com

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