Apart from my ELI classes, I attend 2 other lectures every week related to my Urban & Regional Planning master course. I am familier with most of technical terms in my major fields, but usually just in Japanese. So, I sometimes have to make sure about the definitions of them while lectures checking through my mobile phone.
As for the contents of lectures, I think I can understand most, however, I can’t follow them sometimes of course, especially when teachers say jokes. It is maybe because they usually use slangs that the Japanese public English classes never teach. I learned English just at the such public schools in Japan, and also, unfortunately I am not a big fun of movies on which you can be exposed to many slangs, So, in such occasions, I just follow other students’ laughing, even if I couldn’t understand at all.
Especially, at one of the classes, we have 20 minutes quiz every week, and it is always troublesome for me. At the first week quiz related to urban economics, the question was if the ‘meth lab’ will be the market failure or not, and why the reason is. However, I had never heard the word ‘meth’ then. So, I guessed that from the teacher’s point of view, he should have wanted us to refer not only to the correctness of the lab, but also to the political methods to solve the market failure it might cause as well. Therefore, I wrote the answer about the ‘meth’ as a negative thing for society. Then, I got a point! Good guess strategy, isn’t it!
Of course, the teacher always says to ask any question at any time, however, 20 minutes for the 2 pages quiz is too busy for me to complete both of filling answers and asking words’ definition. Though I have no choice but to prioritize filling paper currently, I hope I could be accustomed to the slangs as well soon.
Are there any tips to master such slangs or short words???, so that I can make the most of 20 minutes, as well as laugh from the bottom of my heart….
meth(noun)- it is a short of methamphetamine drug. It used to be legal in USA, although it has never been legal for ordinary people in Japan. Because of the strong addiction, currently even in USA, its usage is limited just for the medical treatment such as obesity, ADHD. However, in reality, it is pervasive in USA causing many social problems. As I mentioned in the blog above, I couldn’t understand the meaning at the last quiz, and my e-dictionary showed no answer. So, I asked my family through the FB Kawai-family group chatting while that lecture. Then immediately, I could get a professional answer from my husband, as a medical doctor , although it was too late for the quiz anyway…
technopolitics(noun)- means the politics that relates to, or is driven by, modern technology. I saw this word on one of the readings for ‘globalization and urban planning’ class. I could guess the meaning, however, I could not imagine concrete ideas. Then, I searched some papers related to this word on the UHmanoa library site. Some of them say, technopolitics can contribute to bottom-up movements to oppose to the globalization from ‘above’, referring to e-government, e-voting, e-campaign, e-petition and so on. From this point of view, we can create the new term ‘techno-urban planning’ as well, can we? It includes methods such as e-CID(community improvement district) management, e-land zooning, e-real time environmental load measurement etc., supported by GIS(geographic information system) technology as a part of technopolitics. Do you have any other ideas?
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