The World of Patricia Daly Oe

In Japan too many people are afraid of making mistakes when speaking English.

They are so afraid of making a mistake that often they prefer to remain silent.

There are a number of reasons that this situation has developed and probably the education system with its ¡Èright and wrong¡É approach is the main reason.

I teach oral English at two Tokyo Metropolitan high schools.

In the first lesson of the year I tell my students, ¡ÈPlease make mistakes!¡É

Sometimes they look a little puzzled or laugh, thinking that I had made a mistake.

I then explain that the most important aspect of speaking in another language is to quickly convey what you want to say. It doesn¡Çt matter if the grammar is incorrect or that there may be a better choice of words, the most important point is to respond, to keep a conversation going or give your opinion.

In time, the more mistakes we make, the more we improve.

This is true of anything. Think of it as practice.

It is also true in art.

Nearly everyone who is some kind of creator has a mental block, writer's block, artist's block, or lose confidence in their creativity at some point.

I have suffered from this many times.
There are a number of reasons for these blocks.  Often they arise from a desire for perfection, a recognition of the gap between what we want to produce and what we can produce in reality and the consequent fear of failure.
At such times it is extremely difficult to keep creating.

But the most important thing is to keep at it, keep going, keep producing, not everything will be what you are trying to create, in fact, most of it will just be practice.

Recently, a friend of mine, the artist Laura Stagno, lent me an inspiring book called ¡ÈArt and Fear¡É by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

One anecdote in the book I found particularly vivid.

There was an experiment in a ceramics class at a college. The class was divided into two groups of students. The ceramics teacher told one group to produce as much pottery as possible (quantity) and the other group to produce one perfect piece (quality) and both groups were told that they would be graded on their work. On the final day of the class everyone brought in their work but, strangely enough, by far the highest quality of pottery was produced by the group being graded for quantity. The ¡Èquantity¡É group learned from their mistakes whilst churning out a large quantity of work and made great improvements. But the ¡Èquality¡É group was so tense, trying too hard to produce the perfect piece; they were too afraid to make a mistake and their work suffered from this paralysis.
This "fear of failure" in art is not so different from the "fear of making mistakes" in a foreign language.

I got a surprise when I looked at my blog yesterday and found that I had been punished for not updating my blog for 60 days by having a whole load of ads posted on my blog instead.

Well, I thought, I really should write my blog more regularly.

Particularly, as every day a number of people visit my site. Thank you! I have no idea who you are or whether you are regular visitors or random guests but I should write something to make it worth your while to visit.

But what should I write about?

Usually I write about some of my activities related to picture books but I feel I should broaden the scope of what I write.

So I started trying to define what it is I actually do or am that could be a springboard for a regular blog and may be of interest to some readers.

I am writing, illustrating and narrating stories, teaching English and translating from Japanese to English. All of these activities are connected to language and imagination.

So I thought I could write a regular blog on topics such as:

What is important when learning or teaching a language?

What role does imagination play in our lives?

What kind of experiences have I had when teaching English?

What words or expressions present a challenge when translating them from Japanese to English?

How am I inspired to write stories?

How can we use picture books to teach English?

How does imagination influence learning?

I thought these kinds of topics could be rather interesting.

I will try to write something once a week or so and I will start from today¡Ä

To mark the one year anniversary of the "e-ehon" picture book club set up by Cosmopier Publishing Company with a membership now surpassing 1000,
the company will be holding a special all-day English picture book reading event with activities on Sunday, December 11th.
The event will be held in Cosmopier's seminar room near Hatsudai station in Tokyo.
Please reserve early as there are a limited number of spaces.

://www.e-ehonclub.com/index.asp?patten_cd=4&page_no=30

I will be reading Stacy Strawberry and Hayabusa's Story 11:40-12:30 with some fun language practice and activities connected to the stories.
Stacy Strawberry is a story I wrote for Cosmopier in 2009 about a strawberry who wants to be a pineapple...

Hayabusa's Story is based on the true story of the space probe "Hayabusa"  and has inspired many children to become interested in space.