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.
This morning while distributing flyers to promote my English school in Kobe (スミス英会話岡本校） I talked to one woman on the street near the station who spoke English quite well. She said in English that I was ‘exaggerating’ when I commented that she spoke English well. Again, as has happened many times recently, I realized that [...]
This is an interim report on the Smith’s Okamoto school. I took over the Smith’s School of English in Okamoto in July 2006. It had been in operation since September 2004 (6 years total so far) and it had only a tiny 15 active students at the time I took over. This month (August [...]
Last week I had three students and decided to use the vocabulary lessons. These are an interesting part of the Smith’s curriculum. They consist of many units each comprising 12 words. The words are random and unrelated for the most part. Some are nouns. Some are verbs and some are adjectives. Some can be used [...]
This week one of my students showed up and showed me her new homework folder. Since she started in April she has been diligently doing the homework, watching the videos and preparing for the lesson. She has saved all the homework sheets in this new folder. She has filled up this folder and will start [...]
Hi Everyone, I found this fun video on YouTube. Actually I think it can be fun for learning English. This video is from Michelle Phan, a Vietnamese makeup artist. She has her own channel and it is quite interesting. She is quite an artist. But I think you can use her videos to practice listening. [...]
This week, which was quite busy with a few trials, walk-in inquiries and the usual full load of lessons, I got a special surprise. When I called in to ask about a student’s lesson, I was informed that a student who had taken a trial at Smith’s School of English -Fukushima (スミス英会話福島校）had decided to join [...]
I recently received a few bottles of a special beer from my student. She brought them back from Hokkaido. The beer is a micro-brew made using iceberg water. It is called Okhotsk Blue. The Okhotsk Blue Draft is one of the most unique beers around, counting a couple of unusual ingredients into its mix. Chief [...]
Really, the answer to this question is quite obvious and the fact that students continue to sign up and make great strides is proof of it. The ability to communicate well in English will most certainly continue to grow in importance year by year and I think this trend is already accelerating with the current [...]
Last week, John of the Kawanishi School and I went to Ashiya to find a coffee shop and found a nice Italian style shop with outside seating. With the nice weather these days and nice artistic cafe late (this one had the patter of a leaf in the froth), we could really enjoy a nice [...]
So if you asked me what was great about owning and teaching at my own Smith’s School of English (Okamoto School) I would have to say that, having been at it for about 4 years, I treasure each day and each minute I have the opportunity to help my students to make progress to improve [...]
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