During the Smith’s Golden Week holiday, I took a break from my enjoyable work at my school, Smith’s School of English Tsukaguchi in Tsukaguchi, Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, and made a trip to Canada with my wife. We stayed with my parents in my hometown and had a great time. We saw family and friends, ate great [...]
Hello, everyone.
As partner to Mark Smith in the Smith’s School of English company as well as a multiple Smith’s Franchise owner, I habitually read the SSE Soapbox and do so with great pleasure. It is obvious our Smith’s Franchise Team is very happy and that everyone enjoys their work very much.
Most of us like to write [...]
月謝制の英会話ならスミス英会話！
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There is a cute little bakery near my English conversation school, Smith’s School of English Tsukaguchi, and my home in Tsukaguchi, Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture. It is called Feinbrot. They make absolutely delicious croissants and other things there. I love going there on Sunday mornings, picking up some croissants and pastries, then biking back home to have them [...]
With the Golden Week holidays fast approaching I guess many owner/teachers at Smith’s Schools of English are planning overseas and local trips. I say Smith’s Schools of English because we have more days off than teachers who work for other schools and therefore can take a well earned break.
I am going to use my days [...]
Japan is truly a nice country in which to live. For the most part the people are very pleasant and a lot has been done to make Japan a comfortable, clean and convenient place to live for all residents. I like the U. S. too but it is difficult to [...]
By Al Bartle
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Also posted in Fair to teachers, Living in Japan, SSE Okamoto Corner, a reward in itself, english in japan, enjoyed this a lot, rewarding job change, teaching: why i do it
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Tagged スミス英会話岡本, Life in Japan, Smith's School of English, スミス英会話
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Smith’s- why do i love thee so? Let me see……. when i “worked for the man” at another English school in Japan and we had a slow day, i would be assigned some boring paperwork or cleaning job. Lately Wednesdays have been quiet at MY school, Smith’s School of English FC Ohtsu
By Edward
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Also posted in SSE Ohtsu Corner, a reward in itself, enjoyed this a lot
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Tagged 大津ã€æ»‹è³€, broadway, broadwaymusicals, English school Japan, 英会話ã€è‹±ä¼šè©±å¤§æ´¥ã€english, love, musicals, of, Smith's School of English, teaching, trip
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While students are divided by levels at Smith’s School of English that means sometimes there’s a large age gap between students. I’ve had 25 year-old students studying with 65 year-olds or high school students studying with housewives. This just adds flavor to the lesson. The younger students can teach the elder students about the latest [...]
My 6:00 p.m. Saturday lesson this week included two students. We worked on making requests and went through the normal lesson plan with no problems but when I asked them to think of and make requests on their own, they seemed to stumble. In some cases I give them a simple scenario such [...]
The laughs are abundant at Smith’s School of English. This week my Saturday 3pm lesson included three students who were tasked with miming some activities to get their partners to guess what they were doing and to use the past continuous tense. It never fails that one of the students does something [...]
On April 6, 2008 Smith’s Tsukaguchi, Okamoto, Fuse, Horie and Otsu schools held a cherry blossom viewing party(hanami) together at Osaka Castle Park in Osaka. We had a great time! My school brought 23 people and a total of over 80 people attended the event! I arrived early in the morning (at about 7:00am) and [...]
I would like to write about a certain very special new student of mine at Smith’s School of English in Fuse who is an absolute pleasure to teach!
She is so focused on the lesson, she asks for time to write down everything on the board, especially the new vocabulary words, she does her [...]
We had an amazing day Sunday with over 80 students attending Smith’s School of English Hanami Party at Osaka Castle. Al already mentioned some details in his article “A truly fun English School: Smith’s” but i wanted to express how wonderful it was to plan this event with 4 other schools. Everyone at Smith’s has [...]
Students often ask what steps they can take to become better at English. Of course there is no single answer but if I were pressed to give one, it would be to simply “use” English every chance you get. Though there are not millions of native speakers in Japan, there are a [...]
Yesterday’s 2008 Smith’s School Cherry blossom viewing party ( スミス英会話お花見会 ). Was a great deal of fun for all! Excellent weather, beautiful blossoms sometimes fluttering down like snow and terrific conversation were had by all. Students from the Okamoto, Fuse, Otsu, Horie and Tsukaguchi schools got together to enjoy great food, drinks, conversation, [...]
Last night, I met one of my students in front of the station. He has been going to company introduction meetings and interviews all week and he stopped to tell me about his experience. As we were standing there, a young woman who was obviously a new company employee passed by and as [...]
Last week I gave a free trial lesson at Smith’s School of English Tsukaguchi in Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture. My trial student joined! I asked her how she had found out about my school. She said that she had first seen me doing flyers at Hankyu-Tsukaguchi station and had received a flyer there two [...]
There’s not one person I know that doesn’t suffer from some sort of stress…studying English shouldn’t be one of them. In fact it should be just the opposite - in my classroom laughter’s heard in practically every class. It’s kept light and enjoyable as much as possible but that doesn’t mean I’m not strict nor [...]
One higher level student took it upon herself to write her life stories in both English and Japanese and share them with her family. She wanted to show everyone that you can do anything you want to if you put your mind to it. In her first book her writing was good but simple. Her [...]
Every one of my regular 6pm students knows that if they come a little early, they can watch the last couple matches of the Sumo Basho with me before their lessons. After the last basho, students got to know my love for sumo, and every 6pm student last week and this week came early and [...]
Not the most exciting thing, but i noticed some other schools have some great location shots, and as we recently had new signs installed, i thought it would be nice for other schools to see what we look like now. As our school is on the 8th floor (the penthouse as it were), we need [...]
March 30, 2008 – 12:47 am
What’s different about Smith’s School compared with the multitude of English conversation schools in Japan? Bottom to the top it’s totally different. It’s truly a breath of fresh air. No stale lesson plans, no stiff teachers looking truly uncomfortable in ties, just a down-to-earth well thought out curriculum which provides what Japanese [...]
Hi there all.
Business:
Just a quick note to let you know that after considering requests from within the franchise group comments have now been enabled here on the soapbox. We / I really appreciate your efforts in brining news about Smith’s and Japan to the public with the SoapBox and trust this new function [...]
March 23, 2008 – 10:32 pm
The first year of teaching is always difficult, whether you are working for yourself or for a large company. Working for yourself presents a few extra complications and worries, and I must admit that I didn’t always have a lot of confidence in what I was doing or how I was doing things. [...]
March 23, 2008 – 12:59 am
English in Japan is everywhere but at the same time it’s not. In many cases it exists in varying degrees of correctness as decoration on T-shirts and so on, or the “OPEN” and “CLOSE” signs on the stores. From this you can begin to see that there is a real need for Japanese to seek [...]
March 23, 2008 – 12:04 am
So what is good about the Smith’s opportunity? Well, in my case, it allowed me to come back to Japan on my own terms and not at the whim of the company for which I was working. It allowed me to bring my wife back to be near her aging parents and my [...]
It’s springtime again, which means a time of great opportunity for those of us in the Eikaiwa industry. For most of us in the Smith’s system that means setting our Short-Term Achievable Goals to get the ball rolling and drum up some business.
My S.T.A.G. for the spring is a pretty simple one. I [...]
March 17, 2008 – 12:09 am
When I started working in the Smith’s system about 6 years ago, there wasn’t a Smith’s Japanese web site, so I used to get most of my students from flyers that I handed out at train stations. Thanks to Smith’s head office, my school, Smith’s School of English Tsukaguchi in Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture now [...]
March 16, 2008 – 11:59 pm
One of my favourite things in my classroom is a cork board which hosts dozens of pictures from around the world. I have a passion for photography and travel, and a few years ago I realised that the bare walls of the Nagaokakyo school were the perfect canvas for displaying some of my favourite travel [...]
With my red man-to-man student on Saturday, I covered the lesson on imperatives. I always get a kick out of the pictures in the Smith’s curriculum. In case of many of them, no imperative warning could possibly save the person shown from sure death or severe injury. A steel I-beam falling from [...]