Monthly Archives: March 2008

スミス英会話のお花見2008 (Smith’s School Cherry Blossom Viewing 2008)

Several Smith’s Schools are planning to have a fun Cherry Blossom Viewing Party at Osaka Castle on April 6th, 2008. So far the Otsu, Fuse, Horie, Okamoto and Tsukaguchi schools are planning to attend. There should be 6 or more foreign school owners and 35-80 students attending this event from about noon [...]

Warm Weather Is Coming !!

At long last it appears winter is on the way out. That’s good news for all of us, in part because Japan is such a nice place to be in the spring. But also people will renew their feeling to study and learn and, considering the changes the industry has experienced in the [...]

Crop Circles

Last night I taught two high level students using the “New Events” part of the curriculum. The story is very entertaining and allows us to teach a lot of good vocabulary and phrases. Although there are a couple of small errors in the story such “crap” circles and a missing article etc., this [...]

Helping local travel agent with his English

Today I bought some airline tickets and travel insurance to go to Canada with my wife during a coming Smith’s School of English holiday. I bought them a local H.I.S. travel agency, not far from my Smith’s School of English in Tsukaguchi, Amagaski City. The service is excellent and one of the staff members can [...]

creativity vs. structure

While every student that comes through the door at Smith’s yearns to speak English smoothly they all start off at different points in their English mastery. Some have studied at other language schools, others have majored in English and some have simply forgotten most of what they learnt back in junior high school. For the [...]

Why would you decide to have a franchise school?

As a person who’s made the decision to do just that, let me review your options from my point of view.
OK, I can work for a corporate school and earn 250,000 to 300,000 a month working about 40 hours a week. I would put on my necktie and go to work when I was scheduled [...]

Finnigan’s Bar

I have been coaching one particular “man to man” student for the past year or so. She is a special one and likes to understand everything, and I mean everything, down to the last detail. Three weeks ago I started “Finnigan’s Bar” with her. When she saw it on the board she was completely [...]

Morning Routine: an excellent foundation. Other routines: a goldmine for Smith’s students

As Edward says, the morning routine is a great foundation for us and our students. It allows us to teach so many questions and verbs along with practicing prepositions and conjunctions. It also can be expanded when the student does past and future by covering it again using those tenses. Past tense [...]

Smith’s School of English for International Students

As my fellow franchisee, Alex Stanciu explained, Smith’s School is not only for Japanese students of English. I too have had a Chinese student and may soon have a Brazilian student who now lives in Japan and wants to work on her English. She is of course fluent in Portuguese and Japanese. [...]

Student doing translations for me

A student of mine at Smith’s School of English in Tsukaguchi, who has been studying with me for about 4 years, does all of the English to Japanese translations on my school’s web site for me. We also do language exchange and exchange e-mail in addition to her lessons with me at Smith’s. She does [...]

My International classrooms at Smith’s School of English

I don’t know if this has been mentioned on the soapbox before but it just occurred to me this afternoon while teaching a class at Smith’s School of English in Fuse.
I guess when people read about teaching English at Smith’s School of English, or anywhere else in Japan for that matter, we just assume that [...]

New Zealand (ニュージーランド 海外旅行)

This is a country which I have not had the pleasure to visit yet though I know several of my fellow franchisees have visited, especially given the amount of holidays we have here at Smith’s School of English, and it seems to be a very popular destination for Japanese people as well.
Just today at Smith’s [...]