Recent grandfather, ex-businessman turned English School Owner-teacher.
Having a great time with this new career in an extremely nice country.
Univ. of Hawaii graduate (Architecture)
Previously taught at Berlitz and at a major Japanese corporation. Worked for 26 years for 3 Japanese companies as an engineer and manager.
On Feb. 1, 2011 I suddenly had a cancellation of my 9:00 p.m. man-to-man lesson so I quickly sent out invitations to many of my students. Of course I knew that, being such short notice, I would not get many ‘takers’. But happily three of my students joined me. We had a very nice time [...]
Well, a new year has arrived! Now is the time to decide what you want to change in your life, what you want to do differently, what new adventure you want to embark on, what new skill you want to acquire or what new business you want to start. I have been working at this [...]
Hi everyone, Al Bartle of the Smith’s School of English in Okamoto here. I was just checking out the favorites on Smith’s School’s YouTube Channel ‘ssejapan’ and I noticed that the video of Justin Bieber that I favorited a few months ago is now at almost 396 million views. Wow! That is amazing! Baby by [...]
It is important for students of English to think about what the steps are deeply themselves in the very beginning before they set out to acquire good English skills. We as teachers, or as we prefer to call ourselves “coaches of communicative confidence”, can list up the steps and tell the students that these are [...]
Hi! This is Al from the Okamoto School (スミス英会話岡本校） Do you know the legend of the Jack-O-Lantern? I ran across this story on the Internet. I thought it was fun so I made it into a lesson. It seemed opportune for use this week. There seem to be many versions of the story as it [...]
There are many skills students musts learn to be able to really communicate in English. They have to be able to explain about themselves in English and describe their homes, family and their environment in English. Surprisingly this requires
Every day I see thousands of young people here in Japan, near the station and near my school (many are university students). Some of them are studying English or other foreign languages with the intent to become good communicators. I think that these young people are very wise because more than at any time in [...]
This week’s TOEIC video (TOEIC+ Lesson 35) and related lesson have been fun for my students. It is about a young woman from Kyoto who recently moved to Tokyo. She is a Japanese language teacher but what has really caught the attention of many people are her two YouTube channels “thatjapanesegirl” and “thisjapanesegirl” on which [...]
Wow! Last night felt so refreshing! After the hotest summer on record it was great to finally sleep in a cool bedroom without the AC. But it only serves to remind me that Japan has some great seasons. They are very distinct and beautiful. Having lived in Japan for a total of 12 years over [...]
At Smith’s School English in Okamoto スミス英会話岡本校, in two weeks we will be exploring the question of which Beatle was the most prolific and best songwriter, McCartney or Lennon. There was a great post on Yahoo about it. ‘Was it John or Paul?’ As you may remember
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