Profiles, autumn 2007

At our first meeting we draw profiles for everybody and then wrote down our impressions about the profile owner.
( Pictures get bigger by clicking them)

After discussions with each other real attributes were publicly revealed.
















































Belinda has just returned from China, where she spent two years teaching English to students in Jinan university.

She fell in love with China, but had also a culture shock. She noticed, that she could not realize her environment because she could not read chinese signs or understand spoken Chinese. Luckily, she had her students as translators.

The shock went over, when she stopped trying to study Cinese and let the understanding come naturally.

More about Belindas experiences in her blog "Life in Jinan"

State of the Nation

Whatever you think about president Bush, his speech is an important event and a good opportunity to practise language.

Video + text
Comments

Greetings from Mari

Hi Matti,

Will you please tell my best wishes to everybody in the English

group. I found a group in Sipoo which goes better with the time

schedule of the family, so I'll join that one instead of the Kerava

monday group.

Best regards,

Mari

Our new group

Our new group consists of 10 students, a graphic designer, several retired persons, an export assistant, a human resouces manager, a detective seargent in the Helsinki police department, for example.

Science Forum Lectures in English

The Science Forum was arranged in Helsinki 10.-14. january 2007 .

The lectures can be viewed as videos

Most lectures are in Finnish, of course. In English you can find:
Opening lecture: Prof. Georgina Mace (Imperial Collage, Lontoo), Status and trends of global biodiversity
Prof. Bengt Saltin :Gene manipulation to exceed the performance limits in sports: threats or fiction?
Roald Sagdeev (University of Maryland, Venäjän Tiedeakatemia): Legacy of Sputnik

Future terminology

We discussed last time the meaning of Futures Research

The glossary at Ensti, the site for foresight at The Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) defines the term as follows:
Futures studies (Futures research)
The collection, critical analysis, creative synthesis and systematic presentation of intuitive and other knowledge and information about the future. The futures viewpoint is determined by the active subject (individual, firm, office or institution, community, society, state, group of states, humankind, living nature etc.) who gives orientation towards the future. (See also Futurology, Foresight, Forecast).

Anticipation A synonym for futures studies, control of the present which changes towards the future with the help of information concerning the past, present and future. Also, an assessment of the course of development of a trend with some assumed degree of probability during a determined course of time. Anticipation is regarded as being composed of the description of the future, the creation, development and utilisation of methods of analysis and the production, procurement, processing, formulation, analysis and reporting of information on the future. The word is often also used to refer to planning methods in order to separate those from actual futures studies.

Hoping for future discussion
Matti

Goodbye Henry, welcome Susan

On Monday, April 10th we celebrated the end of the spring term. We drank coffee, enjoyed Aarne`s delicious salmon spread and discussed our plans for the summer.

Later, it turned out that Henry had found occupation in USA and Susan is our teacher in the autumn.

Henry brought us items of US politics and policies to discuss. Susan promised to find lots of global problems, but also good news.

News in English

Summer University at Bar Hemingway's

There was a nice "Summer University" meeting of the English Conversation Class at Bar Hemingway's on Friday, June 9th.

We also celebrated Hank's return from US, and heard many interesting stories on his experiences in the California Democratic Convention.