Our names are Mai, Chiaki, Ryoichi, and Yoshito. We are students at Kwansei Gakuin University, which is located in Nishinomiya, Japan, between Osaka and Kobe. We are now taking a course in Intermediate English in the Intensive English Program. We study English because English is now the most useful language in the world. For this class, we had to choose a topic about something we wanted to know more about American culture or American student life. We then had to interview an American student about this topic and compare our image with their answers. Our partner was Kyle, who is a student at SUNY-Oswego. The topic we chose was club activities. We chose this topic because we know only Japanese club style, so we wanted to learn more about clubs in American universities.
The answers we got from our partner changed our image about the US quite a bit. On a scale from 1 to 5, if 1 means it didn’t change our image at all and 5 means it changed our image of the US on this topic, we would say the number 4. The most surprising answer we got from our partner was that fraternities and sororities are the most popular clubs in American universities.
By exchanging email with an American student, we could also learn some new things about American society. The most interesting piece of information we got from our partner was that, although they are very popular, he doesn’t like fraternities or sororities so much.
Since we are studying English now, we could also learn some new vocabulary from our partner. Some new words or expressions we learned are frats and sororities, which area kind of social club; dormitory, which means a residence hall on campus; and tend to (do something), which means to often or generally do something.
We would like to thank our partner for taking the time to help us with this assignment. We also hope they can visit Japan someday and learn more about Japanese culture.
# posted by Johninjapan @ 6:42 AM
