“Wait a minute,” I said to my friend, “How is the start of an Smith’s lesson like a piece of bread?”
I was just thinking about how to learn English vocabulary. I like to give advice on how to study here in Ikoma (生駒). I thought about using software like Supermemo, or Anki. None of my students know about this software, but it is mostly English. I wonder if there is any similar software in Japanese [...]
February 20, 2010 – 8:12 am
My Father’s a really nice guy.
Last christmas, I went to Canada and I met him at the airport.
Then, from there we went to his house and I stayed at his house for the whole holiday.
It was really nice.
That is the script I use to reinforce the silent ‘h’ phenomenon I pointed out a few weeks [...]
February 12, 2010 – 10:25 pm
In English, not all t’s are the same. We have an aspirated t and a stop t. I don’t wax on lyrical about this in class; I just want the students here at my スミス英会話生駒 (English converstation class inIkoma) to notice that a difference exists. I can change how the ending of a word sounds.
These aren’t [...]
February 8, 2010 – 6:26 am
The other day I was thinking about the role of listening in the 英会話 (eikaiwa) industry here in Japan. A lot of students in my school (スミス英会話生駒） have trouble repsonding because they have trouble with listening.
February 5, 2010 – 6:13 pm
I had a trial lesson for a six year old last night at my スミス英会話 (Smith Eikaiwa – school of English) here in Ikoma, and the boy and I had a good time together (kids eikaiwa is popular here). The mother however seemed a bit disappointed. You see, she had had her boy enrolled in [...]
September 8, 2009 – 6:19 am
I read Edward’s post about a student’s trip story using the morning routine and thought I would like to add a bit in a similar vein here.
I was reviewing the Lawson’s story, but wanted to add a twist, I pulled out a photo and erased some of the words in the Lawsons story so it [...]
August 26, 2009 – 4:45 am
mastery I made a recording about one technique for mastering certain skills. I would like to try adding it here. I will rewrite this article if the audio doesn’t work.
Well, it looks like adding audio didn’t work so here is the transcription
English is like playing the piano, its a skill, and if you want to [...]
August 22, 2009 – 7:02 am
I was working with a student the other day and the subject of buying homes came up. He mentioned that he had a mortgage, and that was better than renting. I, felt confident why he would say this, but let him explain (he is practicing English, after all) that once you are finished paying the [...]
I love to teach kids but it is certainly different from adults in some (not all) ways. To begin with, they do not have any English experience. Next, they have shallower experience levels than adults. But they also are more inclined to try to guess what you want them to do. You will find using [...]