Japanese Prof. Receives Award
by Jennifer Nedeau, The GW Hatchet, April 5, 2004
As a young girl, professor Shoko Hamano said she wanted to be an actress. Although she never took formal steps to achieve her goal, Hamano brings her dramatic abilities to the classroom instead of the stage.
Hamano, a Japanese professor and this year's recipient of the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Teaching Award, said she uses creativity in her lesson plans. The award, created by President Trachtenberg in memory of his parents, gives an annual $1,000 prize to an outstanding undergraduate teacher. Hamano received the award Friday afternoon at an hour-long ceremony. About 60 students, friends, profes-sors and administrators attended.
During her acceptance speech, Hamano taught the au-dience about the origins of Japanese, which grew out of the Chinese and Korean languages. She also discussed the difficulties of teaching a language that is the "mirror im-age" of English. She said Japanese can be difficult to teach because it is written in what English speakers would see as an inverse order of words.
"Translate each phrase by reversing the order of words in your mind and then everything will be OK," she said.
Hamano said she often hands assignments back to the wrong students, makes obvious mistakes in lecture and speaks to her students in Japanese in public, to force them to use the language.
"We use the Zen method of learning--if you do it long enough, you will get it," she said.
Hamano said she uses role playing in class to help her students comprehend the foreign language.
"I have mastered a number of role types," Hamano said. "For example a ghost, a news anchor, a flight atten-dant."
A native of Japan, Hamano has been working at GW since 1993. She received her B.A. in Cultural Anthropol-ogy from the University of Tokyo in 1976 and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropological Linguistics from the University of Florida.
Prior to coming to GW, Hamano taught at the Univer-sity of California Santa Cruz and served as acting director for the Japanese Language Program at Harvard University.
"So long as we continue to improve the program, I am going to feel sorry for every graduating class because the other classes will be better off," Hamano said. "For this, I sincerely apologize."
Hamano's students said they enjoy their professor's classes because they are different from other courses.
Freshman Andrew Meyer said Hamano's energy in-spired him to continue taking the language beyond his general curriculum requirement.
"I had no idea how much I would like it," he said.
In December, administrators asked for award nomi-nees. About 200 professors were nominated, said Rachel Wyatt, an assistant to the executive vice president for Academic Affairs. After narrowing down the pool to 56 professors, a team of administrators reviewed the nomi-nees' profiles before choosing Hamano.
Hamano said she was struck that her students realized "teachers do make a conscious attempt to create a learning environment."
"I guess I just have really good students," she said.
2004 National Cherry Blossom Festival
by Jocelyn Campanaro
Two current Japanese students, seniors Mellissa Blackmon and me, had the opportunity to advance goodwill and friendship between Japan and the U.S. as goodwill ambassadors for the 2004 National Cherry Blossom Festival, which was held from March 27 – April 11.
Goodwill ambassadors are selected each year to officially represent the festival at the National Cherry Blossom Festival events. They are chosen for their passion for the Japanese language and culture, outstanding academic background and future Japan-related career goals. If you—both male and female—are interested in applying to be a goodwill ambassador for next year, look for information on the website, www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org.
This year, the festival commemorated the original gift of cherry blossom trees, given to the U.S. by Japan in 1912 during the blossoms peak from March 28 to April 10. In 2004, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and the U.S. The Treaty of Peace and Amity was signed on March 31, 1854.
Highlights of this year’s festival included:
- National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade, including our Japanese students Mellissa Blackmon and Japanese major, Jocelyn Campanaro.
- Sakura Matsuri Street Festival, Mellissa and Jocelyn helped out at many of the events, especially exhibiting their digital dexterity by showing visitors how to fold Origami cranes.
- The George Washington Invitational Crew Classic, Fellow Japanese student Emily Garofalo led GWU’s women’s team to a victory in the Petite Race… okay, okay, it was only the consolation race, but they won!
O-hanami! 2004
This year’s flower viewing party o-hanami—held on April 9—was both blessed and cursed. Blessed because we had fine weather; cursed because most of the blossoms had already scattered. But that did not dampen the spirits of the 35 students and teachers of GW’s Japanese program. Meeting at the Einstein Monument at 12—Onigiriman was late as usual—the group crossed the street and settled down—athough we moved around a bit due to the wind—for lunch and games.
Hamano sensei led the group in charades and a game of telephone, where students were given a Japanese sentence and had to relate it to a teammate, then to the next teammate, then to the next. A few were difficult but one was so easy that virtually everyone got it correct. As our finale, we had our annual Janken contest, pitting students against each other with a jan-ken-pon… atchi-muite-hoi! This year’s winner was Freshman, XYZ, who then faced last year’s champion, Matt Kajiura. Matt must have been training during the off-season, because he defended his title rather handily…
Attention All First-Year Students (Japn 002)
GWで日本語をべんきょうしましょう
Learn Japanese at GW This Summer
Tell your friends about Japanese at GW Summer School!
Did you enjoy your first year of Japanese? Was it challenging? Thrilling? Can't wait to get to the second-year level?
Do you have friends who say, “Oh man! I should've taken Japanese, too” and wish they could join you? Well, they're in luck. The Department of East Asian Lan-guages and Literatures is offering Japanese 001 and 002 during the summer.
Imagine, your friends can take the summer course with Hanami-sensei (he's not as tough as they say), then join you in class for Japn 003 in the Fall Semester! Class meets four times a week for two hours over 12 weeks. First session is May 19 to June 30, and second session is July 6 to August 13.
For the convenience of those who want—or need—to work over the summer, the courses are in the evening, 6 to 8.
For more information, go to see the inside cover. So invite your friends to join you in the Japanese pro-gram
GＷで日本語をべんきょうしましょう。
