About 28 years ago I started my MA studies in Linguistics without enough background knowledge and English skills at KU. I think the program itself then lacked some of the necessary support to help international students like me who were faced with such difficulties. As a result, many of students in the same position as me changed their major to Curriculum and Instruction in Education, which at that time consisted of a good combination of subjects from the departments of Education, English and Linguistics.

I was one of the few who could manage to complete my graduate study at KU and in the process was able to gain valuable experience teaching Japanese as a TA for my final academic year, 1977-8. One of the required subjects was TESL Methodology that Dr. Gregory had then taught. I enjoyed both the theoretical and practical content in his class with other friendly classmates. I still have textbooks and copied articles from those days. Dr. Gregory had international teaching experiences, particularly in Indonesia, was very friendly in his teaching manner and generous to international students.

It is because of this that I have only good memories from his class. I remember on one occasion that he invited us to his home in Lawrence and had a home party with a variety of Indonesian dishes that his wife had prepared. I still remember it as an exotic cultural experience. Of course it was not only that we were able to taste some ethnic foods that made his classes so stimulating, but also his positive implementation of intercultural communication that was so important. I now teach EFL at a Japanese university and I hope that I can continue as an intercultural person like Dr. Gregory, and in doing so, to try to educate my students also to be interculturally aware members of the community.

Kazunori Nozawa
Professor & CALL Facilitator
Ritsumeikan University, Faculty of Economics & Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science
Nojihigashi, Kusatsu, Japan

2003 ESL MiniConference Online