At my Smith’s School in Fukushima, there are half a dozen guys who come and study together, sponsored twice every week by their employer. The lessons are always very animated and enjoyable because they are so competitive with each other. It is clear that they enjoy their jobs and are very happy working together.
The other [...]
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 English School Articles, Fair to teachers, Living in Japan, SSE Okamoto Corner, a reward in itself, english in japan, 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 English School Articles, SSE Ohtsu Corner, a reward in itself
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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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Last night I had a great lesson with two of my newest students, a husband and wife. He is a Japanese engineer and she is a Chinese housewife. They are a very nice couple and get along very well during the class. Their participation is great. They are beginners but I [...]
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 [...]
April 10, 2008 – 11:29 pm
Students who are “Normal” can get very comfortable with their teacher and classmates, so it’s always an interesting twist when a new face pops into class.
Recently, two of our more mature students had their first class together. The last time that Mr. T and Mr. S saw one another was at the Smith’s Halloween [...]
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, [...]
Smith’s School of English provides a very different kind of experience for our students. Our teachers care about each and every student and we really try to stretch their ability in as many ways as possible. We often arrange for special events to give them the opportunity to practice the English they have [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Today, 6 of my students, my wife and I went out to have a bowling and karaoke party in Kobe. During this time, each student sung songs in English and lo and behold one of my quietest students belted out several songs with a voice I could not believe. Singing Backstreet Boys, Billy [...]
Several Smith’s Schools are planning to have a fun Cherry Blossom Viewing Party at Osaka Castle on April 6th, 2008. So far the Otsu, Fuse, Horie, Okamoto and Tsukaguchi schools are planning to attend. There should be 6 or more foreign school owners and 35-80 students attending this event from about noon [...]
Last night I taught two high level students using the “New Events” part of the curriculum. The story is very entertaining and allows us to teach a lot of good vocabulary and phrases. Although there are a couple of small errors in the story such “crap” circles and a missing article etc., this [...]
As Edward says, the morning routine is a great foundation for us and our students. It allows us to teach so many questions and verbs along with practicing prepositions and conjunctions. It also can be expanded when the student does past and future by covering it again using those tenses. Past tense [...]
As my fellow franchisee, Alex Stanciu explained, Smith’s School is not only for Japanese students of English. I too have had a Chinese student and may soon have a Brazilian student who now lives in Japan and wants to work on her English. She is of course fluent in Portuguese and Japanese. [...]
February 19, 2008 – 4:21 am
One of my students came for her lesson last night and was very excited to show me he score report for the TOEIC. She made a 90 point improvement and this has been since she started studying with me. This made me feel great too!
TOEIC is quite a hard test for our students. [...]
February 16, 2008 – 8:19 pm
Our 2008 New Year’s Party was a blast for everyone. We had over 20 participants at this year’s party which was held at Cafe DECO on the first floor below my school. We had a lot of fun conversation, good food and drink and played some English games. Click on the link [...]
February 16, 2008 – 8:08 pm
This Saturday, one of my man-to-man students came to her class and I was all set to do the Ability 2 lesson on making invitations. After practicing making and accepting these for a while I realized that there is not much difference between an invitation and a request which we had covered in a [...]
February 15, 2008 – 2:53 am
So in my last lesson last night I was asked by the two students to give them something to practice the R and L sound. I came up with the above sentence. I had them each read the sentence and then corrected their “R” pronunciation for the words “really” and “lyrics” which turned [...]
February 5, 2008 – 8:24 pm
Today, my helper and I were passing out flyers in front of the JR Settsumotoyama Station and my student’s mother stopped by to introduce herself and say that her son had told her that I was a great teacher! Wow! That surely made my day. I thanked her and told her that [...]
January 30, 2008 – 6:28 pm
One of the reasons I love living in Japan is the great food. There is so much variety and I am pretty sure that most of the veggies are the freshest that money can buy. But what’s more is the quality of beef in Japan is superb. Even when you order the [...]
January 23, 2008 – 10:43 pm
Thanks to Gavin we now know how to include a picture in our post. Back in October last year we had a very pleasant Halloween Party at a local cafe in Okamoto (Kobe) and I posted the story on my school’s site.
Here I just want to try out the picture insertion process that Gavin of [...]
January 17, 2008 – 7:35 pm
Last year in August when I was passing out flyers I met a guy in front of JR Settsumotoyama Station who seemed interesting and was interested in what I was doing. It turned out that he was a recent graduate of the Paris Conservatory of Music and had won a gold metal in classical [...]
January 13, 2008 – 8:20 pm
I just had the funniest idea. Since the beginning of time or at least since Japanese language was created and there has been interaction between Japanese people and English speaking people, Japanese have had to endure the persistent problem of the infamous “R” pronunciation required in English. Of course the “R” phoneme at [...]
January 13, 2008 – 6:29 pm
My fellow franchisee, Adrian Shephard, has again written three excellent posts. I share his optimism about the future of the English Conversation industry and my school. I also share his optimism about belonging to a dynamic franchise like Smith’s. Belonging to something bigger with great web presence and kind and a courteous staff is essential. [...]
January 12, 2008 – 7:09 am
In one of my Man-to-Man lesson today, I covered Adjectives 2 and reviewed Adjectives 1. I think it was a good lesson in which I introduced and huge list of adjectives and encouraged the student to describe things and people. I encouraged her to always learn adjectives as pairs including the words of opposite meaning [...]
January 10, 2008 – 6:12 am
Well all jobs have their ups and downs. After having two fun students go out on a two month leave, I had a fun trial and got one new Man-to-Man student today. And on top of that I had a really fun lesson with two Red students. We covered the Past 4 [...]
January 8, 2008 – 4:10 am
One of my students is 75 years old. She is studying to keep her head busy and activated more than to perfect her English. She is a very nice woman and is quite interesting. We worked on “Ability 2″ which covers making, accepting and refusing invitations today. At the end of the [...]