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 13, 2008 – 5:59 am
Japan with its extremely limited natural resources is totally dependent on other countries to purchase almost all raw materials and fossil fuels. Despite this it is the second largest economy in the world and its people, who work more hours than anyone else in the world, are very resourceful and intelligent. They design [...]
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 [...]
January 4, 2008 – 2:10 am
In a recent posting by Al Bartle at Smith’s School of English in Okamoto he made reference to some of the challenges all of us face in the classroom in helping our students to improve their English and specifically he mentioned pronunciation which is definitely a challenge, especially when trying to change the sometimes deeply [...]
January 4, 2008 – 1:14 am
ちっとも見当がつかないよ。
全然［さっぱり］分かりません。／見当もつきません。／全く考え付きません。
Here at Smith’s School of English we use a loop type lesson format which includes teaching our students what we call a “One-point” at the end of every lesson. It’s basically a useful expression which they can memorize and immediately begin using.
http://www.sse-franchise.com/soapbox/category/english-lesson-plans/
I always encourage my students to use what they have learned as much [...]
January 3, 2008 – 5:21 am
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I want to point out some obstacles that Japanese students of English face. I could start with the fact that English pronunciation is hundreds of times more difficult than Japanese or the fact that Japanese has no articles or is not a prepositional language like English or [...]
December 30, 2007 – 9:30 pm
English in Japan. Simply put, it is everywhere and nowhere at various levels of correctness and authenticity. It is being used by some Japanese on a regular basis to communicate with foreigners they meet or correspond with through their business or study. It, or some semblance of it, is found on thousands [...]
December 28, 2007 – 5:37 am
We teacher-owners of Smith’s School of English are very lucky to be able to enjoy not only the rewards of owning and operating our own schools but also to make a difference in the lives of our students and to really be able to help them to realize their full potential. Unike the teachers at [...]
December 27, 2007 – 5:57 am
I really enjoyed reading Adrian’s posts too. It is great to see that someone has been in this business as a Smith’s owner for over 7 years and still really enjoys it and has helped his students to get great results on the EIKEN and TOEIC. Makes me still feel like an infant with only [...]
December 24, 2007 – 9:21 am
Well, another great benefit of Smith’s School is the long holidays that we have to rest and spend time with family and friends and travel if we choose. The Christmas-New Year’s Holiday spans 15 days this year (from Dec. 23rd to Jan. 6th). It’s been only two days so far and I already [...]
December 22, 2007 – 11:32 pm
I really enjoyed reading this one written by Craig, the owner of the Ohtsu School. It expresses exactly what we must do to succeed. Become a part of the local merchant family and show the brand. Get to know the people doing business in the vicinity of your school and let them [...]
December 22, 2007 – 10:57 pm
Well, I am planning to have a New Year’s Party again this year. This time I will rent out the cafe below my school for 2-3 hours. I often eat at the cafe during the year and the owner is always very kind and hospitable. It is a family owned restaurant called Cafe DECO and [...]
December 16, 2007 – 5:50 am
The other day I had a late lesson with three students. They were all working for companies. One is a company director, one is a new employee for a major electronics and one works for a top-rated sports shoe manufacturer. We did a phrase lesson and covered some new vocabulary. [...]
December 16, 2007 – 5:24 am
Recently I noticed that more and more trial students are coming to the school with copies of my web pages. Copies of the main page and the pages for the events are usually included. I always mention that I noticed they had looked at my site. They always say, “Yes, it looks [...]
December 7, 2007 – 4:53 pm
For those considering to work for a corporate school, you might want to take a look at one such teacher’s plight on a popular web video upload site. Although the story shown there is exaggerated a bit and was made mostly for the purpose of entertainment, it is still all too real for some [...]
December 4, 2007 – 10:59 pm
With the recent addition of fingerprinting foreigners at immigration, there has been a lot of talk this past month about the treatment of foreigners in Japan. Here is something you probably don’t hear much about:
Last week, I had to go to one of the government offices to get some documents changed. I recently had my [...]
December 2, 2007 – 3:21 am
I have often remembered my students birthdays and gotten them a piece of cake from one of the fine bakeries in the neighborhood of the school. As Okamoto is well know for great bakeries, this is always fun and I have never ever gotten cake that the students do not enjoy. But this [...]
November 25, 2007 – 7:35 pm
My cousin is currently in Hong Kong setting up an office for an investment company. He is thinking about coming to Japan to visit us before xmas, so we have been exchanging emails on what to do.
This really reminded me how much there is to do here! So many excellent activities (golf, skiiing, scuba diving, [...]
November 23, 2007 – 4:52 pm
One of my man-to-man students is a premed student. In his English class at his university he was required to write his opinion on some difficult topics related to medical ethics. His chosen topic was “End of Life Issues”. He came to class with his draft and we checked it together and [...]
November 21, 2007 – 11:11 pm
My husband (and co-owner of Smith’s Azamino), Mike, has recently gotten back into golf, an activity he used to do quite a bit in Canada when he was younger, and one which we didn’t think we could afford to do here in Japan. While it isn’t cheap, it is not unreasonably expensive if you [...]
November 21, 2007 – 6:46 pm
The staff at the head office is great! They have helped me many times and just the other day one of my students told me that the young women who answer the phone to book their lessons etc. are always very kind and helpful. She was very sincere when she said this. [...]
November 21, 2007 – 4:17 pm
With the recent failure of the largest corporate English school in Japan, I have come to wonder, shall I say “hope” that those 400,000+ students will take a hard look at how they were treated by this corporate school and decide to find a monthly tuition school like Smith’s so as not to be burned [...]
November 18, 2007 – 12:54 am
Last Saturday night, one of our students came to her lesson looking totally exhausted. She was shivering from the cold, and had a couple of very heavy bags she needed to bring home. Her husband, who usually picks her up after her lessons, was out of town. She doesn’t drive, so she was going to [...]