January 13, 2008 – 8:20 pm
I just had the funniest idea. Since the beginning of time or at least since Japanese language was created and there has been interaction between Japanese people and English speaking people, Japanese have had to endure the persistent problem of the infamous “R” pronunciation required in English. Of course the “R” phoneme at [...]
January 13, 2008 – 6:29 pm
My fellow franchisee, Adrian Shephard, has again written three excellent posts. I share his optimism about the future of the English Conversation industry and my school. I also share his optimism about belonging to a dynamic franchise like Smith’s. Belonging to something bigger with great web presence and kind and a courteous staff is essential. [...]
January 13, 2008 – 5:59 am
Japan with its extremely limited natural resources is totally dependent on other countries to purchase almost all raw materials and fossil fuels. Despite this it is the second largest economy in the world and its people, who work more hours than anyone else in the world, are very resourceful and intelligent. They design [...]
January 12, 2008 – 7:09 am
In one of my Man-to-Man lesson today, I covered Adjectives 2 and reviewed Adjectives 1. I think it was a good lesson in which I introduced and huge list of adjectives and encouraged the student to describe things and people. I encouraged her to always learn adjectives as pairs including the words of opposite meaning [...]
January 10, 2008 – 6:12 am
Well all jobs have their ups and downs. After having two fun students go out on a two month leave, I had a fun trial and got one new Man-to-Man student today. And on top of that I had a really fun lesson with two Red students. We covered the Past 4 [...]
January 8, 2008 – 4:10 am
One of my students is 75 years old. She is studying to keep her head busy and activated more than to perfect her English. She is a very nice woman and is quite interesting. We worked on “Ability 2″ which covers making, accepting and refusing invitations today. At the end of the [...]
January 3, 2008 – 5:21 am
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I want to point out some obstacles that Japanese students of English face. I could start with the fact that English pronunciation is hundreds of times more difficult than Japanese or the fact that Japanese has no articles or is not a prepositional language like English or [...]
December 30, 2007 – 9:30 pm
English in Japan. Simply put, it is everywhere and nowhere at various levels of correctness and authenticity. It is being used by some Japanese on a regular basis to communicate with foreigners they meet or correspond with through their business or study. It, or some semblance of it, is found on thousands [...]
December 30, 2007 – 6:33 am
Why become a Teacher-Owner of your own English Conversation School in Japan at this moment? Because the largest corporate English conversation school in Japan, which had 60% of the market share went out of business three months ago after a 21-year build-up, and left hundreds of thousands of its students with little to show for [...]
December 28, 2007 – 5:37 am
We teacher-owners of Smith’s School of English are very lucky to be able to enjoy not only the rewards of owning and operating our own schools but also to make a difference in the lives of our students and to really be able to help them to realize their full potential. Unike the teachers at [...]
December 27, 2007 – 5:57 am
I really enjoyed reading Adrian’s posts too. It is great to see that someone has been in this business as a Smith’s owner for over 7 years and still really enjoys it and has helped his students to get great results on the EIKEN and TOEIC. Makes me still feel like an infant with only [...]
December 24, 2007 – 9:21 am
Well, another great benefit of Smith’s School is the long holidays that we have to rest and spend time with family and friends and travel if we choose. The Christmas-New Year’s Holiday spans 15 days this year (from Dec. 23rd to Jan. 6th). It’s been only two days so far and I already [...]
December 22, 2007 – 11:32 pm
I really enjoyed reading this one written by Craig, the owner of the Ohtsu School. It expresses exactly what we must do to succeed. Become a part of the local merchant family and show the brand. Get to know the people doing business in the vicinity of your school and let them [...]
December 22, 2007 – 10:57 pm
Well, I am planning to have a New Year’s Party again this year. This time I will rent out the cafe below my school for 2-3 hours. I often eat at the cafe during the year and the owner is always very kind and hospitable. It is a family owned restaurant called Cafe DECO and [...]
December 16, 2007 – 5:50 am
The other day I had a late lesson with three students. They were all working for companies. One is a company director, one is a new employee for a major electronics and one works for a top-rated sports shoe manufacturer. We did a phrase lesson and covered some new vocabulary. [...]
December 16, 2007 – 5:24 am
Recently I noticed that more and more trial students are coming to the school with copies of my web pages. Copies of the main page and the pages for the events are usually included. I always mention that I noticed they had looked at my site. They always say, “Yes, it looks [...]
December 7, 2007 – 4:53 pm
For those considering to work for a corporate school, you might want to take a look at one such teacher’s plight on a popular web video upload site. Although the story shown there is exaggerated a bit and was made mostly for the purpose of entertainment, it is still all too real for some [...]
December 5, 2007 – 4:53 pm
Well I’ve almost finished my first year and a half as an English school owner-teacher in Japan. Although there were some tough times, overall it has been quite fun and rewarding. I’ve had more fun this past year than I’d had in the five years prior! Great students, fun events, great [...]
December 2, 2007 – 3:21 am
I have often remembered my students birthdays and gotten them a piece of cake from one of the fine bakeries in the neighborhood of the school. As Okamoto is well know for great bakeries, this is always fun and I have never ever gotten cake that the students do not enjoy. But this [...]
November 23, 2007 – 4:52 pm
One of my man-to-man students is a premed student. In his English class at his university he was required to write his opinion on some difficult topics related to medical ethics. His chosen topic was “End of Life Issues”. He came to class with his draft and we checked it together and [...]
November 21, 2007 – 6:46 pm
The staff at the head office is great! They have helped me many times and just the other day one of my students told me that the young women who answer the phone to book their lessons etc. are always very kind and helpful. She was very sincere when she said this. [...]
November 21, 2007 – 4:17 pm
With the recent failure of the largest corporate English school in Japan, I have come to wonder, shall I say “hope” that those 400,000+ students will take a hard look at how they were treated by this corporate school and decide to find a monthly tuition school like Smith’s so as not to be burned [...]
November 20, 2007 – 2:54 pm
Well that’s a good question. First, I like being able to set my own schedule. Second, I have the personal satisfaction of knowing that I am giving a good lesson since the Smith’s curriculum is solid and was developed considering the needs of Japanese students but is open-ended enough to be expanded to meet the [...]
November 19, 2007 – 3:41 am
On the 27th of October we had our 2007 Halloween Party. We booked a restaurant and gatherered there for 2 hours to share some fun discussion and even sung the “12 days” of Halloween Song”. Check it out on my school’s site.
Al Bartle (Smith’s School of English – Okamoto)
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November 17, 2007 – 7:01 pm
I have a student whose family lived in Vancouver for 2 years. She studied at a private kindergarten and elementary school for two years. She is reading at about 3rd grade level. However, she needs to practice writing, otherwise she will not be able to write at her level. She is [...]
November 14, 2007 – 8:40 pm
Last week and this week on Wednesday, I had fun lessons with one of my Orange students. She is fortunate to have a lesson alone quite often. Last week I taught the lesson “Adjectives 1″ and under “Opinion” I wrote up “useful” and “useless” and used the remote control for the CD player [...]
November 7, 2007 – 5:17 pm
Regarding the purchase of a large English language school by another corporation, it is high time for Japanese foreign language students to understand the basics of the business of language education. First you have a teacher in a classroom or over the net teaching perhaps 2 to 6 students. The basis of [...]
October 23, 2007 – 7:53 pm
Don’t you just love this fall weather? The temperature during the day is just right. And in the evening it is not yet very cool so the evenings are nice too.
It makes me remember all those years that I worked from dawn to dusk and hardly even saw the daylight. Being a [...]
October 15, 2007 – 12:13 am
Good morning! How are you?
You probably think it must get frustrating to say this over and over a thousand times while trying to establish eye contact and smile at those prospective students when I pass out flyers. I would be seriously remiss if I were to say there is never any frustration, but there are [...]
October 7, 2007 – 10:35 pm
We are planning to have a small Halloween Party for some Smith’s Okamoto students on Saturday Oct. 27th at a local restaurant. I have already got about 12 people who are saying that they will attend. I think it will top out between 15 and 20 attendees. The restaurant only holds 26. [...]