■Summary
Description:
CIRs conduct "Cultural Understanding Lectures" in places such as the prefecture's elementary, junior and senior high schools, and local international exchange groups. The CIRs create PowerPoint presentations appropriate for the audience and introduce games from different countries and simple conversations in various languages. Four CIRs (Korean, Chinese, American, Canadian) are engaged in this work.
Duration |
Ongoing throughout the year |
|---|---|
Location |
Schools, community centres, etc. |
Target |
Local citizens |
Participants |
10 to 100 people |
Organiser |
International Affairs Division, Yamagata Prefectural Government |
Budget |
0 yen |
Objectives:
To promote understanding toward different cultures by hearing directly from the people from those countries.
■Lecture Details (Case of the Korean CIR)
About the CIR:
Cho Hewon is a Korean CIR in her second year. She has around one to two lectures per month and sometimes up to eight; however, this year she has already done twenty lectures.
Lectures Aimed at Elementary Schools:
Visits to elementary schools as part of their integrated study periods comprise most of the visits.
For children's activities in the lower grades, photographs of children in Korea of similar age groups are shown and games such as those played by Koreans during the Lunar New Year are introduced.
Social conditions such as transportation information are introduced to the children in the upper grades through quizzes. They are also introduced to simple Korean phrases such as self introductions.
Props such as the national Korean costume, chopsticks, and money are used. The final ten minutes of each lecture is set aside for a question and answer session.
Lectures Aimed at Adults:
The International Exchange Centre holds regular Korea-related lectures where the CIR acts as the lecturer. Each lecture carries a different theme such as "Korean Nationalism", "Walking in Seoul", or "Korean History".
Lectures are also carried out when requests are received from welfare facilities, universities, citizen groups, etc.
Meetings and Preparations:
It is necessary to carry out preliminary meetings with the people who placed the requests, but if it is not possible, telephone meetings will be conducted. This is carried out to confirm details of the venue size, participant numbers, and participants' knowledge on Korea, etc., as well as to accept requests on the lecture content from the other parties.
There have been no previous CIRs from Korea, making her the first in the prefectural government. With no precedents to follow, the content of her lectures is steadily expanding. She is also teaching the first Korean language classes to be held at the prefectural office among other activities. It has been helpful to use the CD containing information about Korea gathered from other Korean JET participants (materials produced by senior participants that have received good reviews).
■Preparation
Creating the Guidelines:
Lectures will be carried out according to the guidelines of the requests. The visit request form is contained with the guidelines.
Creating Lecture Content:
The new CIR will be asked to prepare a presentation on a subject he/she is comfortable with, whilst using his/her predecessor's or other prefecture's examples for reference.
Publicity/Recruitment:
The prefectural government website lists the profiles of all the CIRs and helps to publicise the visiting lectures. It was made by the CIRs and originally used for publicity to increase the number of lecture requests from the schools.
The awareness of these lectures is increasing, and teachers are now utilising the website to select and place requests directly.
Furthermore, there are requests from the International Exchange Centre for visits to projects of similar nature that occur there.
Procedure for Dispatch:
An initial telephone request should be placed to express a desire for dispatch, and upon confirmation of the CIR's schedule, formal documentations are submitted.
Report:
The requesting party must produce a report of the event after it has been carried out. Moreover, the CIR will need to submit an activities report in line with other business trips.
■Budget
None (Travel expenses incurred will be bourne by the requesting party.)
■Submitted by
Yamagata Prefectural Government
International Affairs Office
Tel: 023-630-2123
■Comments/Advice from the Supervisor
The lectures carried out by our prefectural CIRs have been in place since April, 2003, and there have been increasing requests for dispatch each year. The lectures receive very good reviews.
Being in charge, I am always pleased to find out that the elementary school children have enjoyed the lectures and learnt things about other countries from reading the thank you letters they sent after the visits.
Where possible, we try to carry out exchanges with many prefectural citizens, however, most of the visits focus on neighbouring villages, towns and cities due to the distance and access to venues.
The content of the lectures will be promoted on the homepage in the future so that more citizens will get to know about the programme. At the same time we aim to enrich the content of the lectures and make them more frequent.
■A Word From CLAIR
Dispatch lectures are one of one of the most common events for international exchange associations. It is difficult to ensure a variety of nationalities amongst the lecturers for this type of work. The JET Programme has tended to focus on English-speaking countries, and people from English-speaking countries are still the most popular for the integrated study periods at elementary schools. The JET Programme is inviting participants from an increasing number of countries, and hopefully the variety of activities in this area will increase as well.
