Author Archives: les

I live in Ikoma, Nara, and own the Ikoma Smith’s School of English franchise. I love it here! I have been in Japan for ten years now, and am raising my son here with my wife.

How I teach Babies and Counting with Beans

November 11, 2008 – 10:41 pm

Little Akira is making a short sentence and stops in the middle of a sentence.  He pauses for a while and gives up.  What happened?  He wanted to express a number but couldn’t.  He hasn’t learned numbers yet.
Children love numbers and counting, especially when they are younger.  They know it gives them power over their [...]

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Babies: How I Teach Using a Big Yellow Ball

October 24, 2008 – 5:17 pm

You are coming to class.  The teacher is big, and a bit strange.  You remember he is somehow nice, but still big and strange, and the class is different from your familiar home.  You feel a bit nervous and withdrawn, uncertain.  Then the big, bright yellow ball rolls past… you can’t resist and Chase It!
That’s [...]

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How I Teach Brown Bear Brown Bear to Toddlers

October 10, 2008 – 6:03 am

When I teach toddlers, one thing I want them to go away with is a positive feeling towards English.  But I also want them to go away with a positive feeling towards books and reading too.  I use Eric Carle’s books for this.  They come as board books (they have hard cardboard pages) so they [...]

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Toddlers: How I Set Up Rapport With Them

October 5, 2008 – 4:33 am

I have kids in my school. Many people don’t like teaching kids, but I do.
They work for me, and they are (almost) always enthusiastic. They have a
lot of energy and teaching them is often close to playing.
Well, I also have a boy who is one year seven months old. Baby? No.
Toddler? [...]

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Smith Training October 5, 2008 Osaka Kyobashi

October 5, 2008 – 4:01 am

Today I went to the Smith School of English training seminar. I like to go
to these becuase it refreshes me and keeps me current with the other owners
and the direction and goals of our group. Of course Mark Smith had lots to
tell us that was really valuable and interesting, like the

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Listening Tactics II

June 21, 2008 – 7:17 am

Learn the Vocabulary
It may seem obvious, but learning vocabulary is very important.  Words that we don’t know do not sound like words; they sound like noise.  Of course, you can learn a new word by hearing it, if it is the only one that is new for you.  But you still probably need to hear [...]

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Listening Tactics

June 17, 2008 – 9:22 pm

When I started to learn Japanese I wanted to listen to anything and everything. This was good, but it was just too difficult. I became frustrated.
Then, I wanted to learn by listening to small selections of Japanese again and again and again. This was also good, but natural conversation is not like [...]

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