Lab seminar

This week, I had a chance to give a talk at lab seminar. First I lectured for students about “stable isotope ratio”, including basic concept of it, mechanism of isotopic discrimination and the usefulness of it in our study. After Thomas’s presentation, I did another presentation about my field study at Waikiki area and incubation studies. Totally it took 60 minutes. I’m content with my performance, this time. I asked Celia about my English. She advised me that 1) speed is good, 2) sometimes include unclear pronunciation, and 3) to improve more, I should put intonation as native speaker do. English of mine and Thomas, who is French, is too flat. But it’s hard to get natural intonation. In the movie, Japanese are sometimes described as the one, who are talking with weird and exaggerated intonation. So, I feel that it might be better to speak flat than speak with weird intonation.

(Sorry, no photo, then just image of my presentation)

By the way, I'm struggled to improve my English so that I can talk more complicated things with friends and I can make friends laugh more! It should be more enjoyable, if I could! But when I talked with Andy last Friday, he kindly suggested to me not to emphasize what the hell I can not communicate well in English, and not to become too humble. Actually it was not humbleness for me, but kind of trouble. But I might have learned from him that I should pride on what I can do, rather than focus on what I can not do. It may be stereotype image of American people personality and Japanese one. But I'm thinking that when people have 50% superiority and 50% inferiority, American people could pride on the former things for friends, and in contrast Japanese people may cry on the latter. Since today, I'll enjoy about what I can do, and never cry on what I can not do. It should make me happy and my friends surrounding me so happy, too! Thanks Andy, you are good teacher.