Thomas Asada-Grant

23 years of teaching EFL in Japan. 2001 Conference presentation; "Influence of Western writing organization and structure on Japanese Univ. students' Japanese writing styles. 2009 Conference presentation; Effect of Japanese classmate evaluations on Japanese students' self-evaluations" . Reason for joining the network: 20014-15 conducting a 1 question survey sent to English language international Interfaith networks, national Interfaith Dialogue associations in the US, UK, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Canada identified from Wikipedia, and by referral, as well as Islamic Studies departments of US universities on the East Coast/ Mid-Atlantic states, the internet cites of various US national Muslim publications and associations, all of the Catholic parishes of the archdiocese of Boston, and Baltimore; all the diocese offices of Canada. I attempted to use Google to translate letters in Arabic to "top 50" Islamic scholars most residing in the Middle East ( later discovered these emails were unreadable). The survey question: Do Muslim, Christian, Jewish clerics at the local level meet together "regularly" in your area to discuss issues of mutual concern?" Approx 400 email letters sent out, shaped as much as possible to the scholars' interests, expertise. I spent alot of time online seeking work, or opinions they had written. But I burned out. The letters to the parishes were minimally shaped, refined. Also it didn't seem to affect their response rate. I was connected to nobody they knew. The replies were most successful when a previous reply mentioned someone I could contact. This sounds obvious, but at first the student, like myself, is faced with the discouragement of sending out vast numbers of letters and seeking the first few replies. I have little idea of my actual response rate, as i am still going through my inbox and sending follow up emails.