A paper by Dr. Robb Scott, assistant professor of advanced education programs at Fort Hays State University, has been accepted for publication in a prestigious Japanese journal.

“Mono No Aware: Revisiting the Magic Bonsai Tree” will be published in the PanSIG Journal, the publication of the annual PanSIG Conference of the Japan Association for Language Teaching.

“The idea at the core of my paper is a technique I developed as a young ESL teacher at SIUC Niigata, one of the first American branch campus programs in Japan, in 1988,” said Scott. SIUC is Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. ESL is English as a Second Language.

More than 30 years later, while studying the meaning of the Japanese phrase “mono no aware” (moh-no-no-ah-wah-ray), he found himself reflecting on his beautiful memory of that experience. Perhaps the best way to translate the phrase, he said, is “the transitory beauty of experience, or nostalgia.”

His reflection led to a decision to submit a proposal, subsequently accepted, to present at last year's PanSIG conference at Konan University in Nishinomiya.

“It turns out my technique for teaching reading and listening skills using story-writing activities with English learners is supported by a new generation of research on second language acquisition, relevance theory, and brain science," said Scott, “so I experienced nostalgia on many levels by returning to Japan and becoming reacquainted with the ideas that originally inspired me there.”

Scott is a teacher educator in the special education program and the English for Speakers of Other Languages program at FHSU.

In order to have the print version of his presentation included in the PanSIG journal, his paper went through a rigorous peer-review process, forcing him to update and justify his premises and requiring the assistance of an old colleague to translate the abstract into Japanese.

Another former colleague, who witnessed and participated in Scott’s classes at SIUC Niigata, provided a personal account which was used as corroborative evidence in the final revision.

“When the editor notified me my paper was accepted, I felt young again for a moment,” said Scott, adding that, at age 61, he is a five-year survivor of lung cancer.