So if you asked me what was great about owning and teaching at my own Smith’s School of English (Okamoto School) I would have to say that, having been at it for about 4 years, I treasure each day and each minute I have the opportunity to help my students to make progress to improve [...]
I think that one of the best lessons in the Intermediate level is the lesson on “Making Requests”. The students really cannot get too much practice at doing this. The number and variety of such requests is limitless and makes for a great lesson. The example list using “verb + topic” is very useful and [...]
Hi Everyone, I subscribe to the SHUUKAN ST, a weekly newspaper for Japanese students of English. It has a variety of articles for students of various levels from beginners to advanced. There is always a section there called “Odds & Ends”. It is written by James Tschudy, writer and translator. He has a knack for [...]
Ok, so what is most needed in just about everything we do? It is absolutely, without a doubt, confidence! Look around you today and try to find what is missing and perhaps the root cause of the economic downturn plaguing the world. It is the lack of confidence. Confidence to buy things, to start new [...]
Nearing the completion of my third year since coming to Japan to take over an existing school, I can honestly say that it has been well worth it to make this career change. Oh yes, there were hard times in the beginning and I can’t allow myself to drop the quality level of my lessons, [...]
One of my university students recently asked me to check her essay. She had to write this and submit it to be chosen to enter a special department at her university which focuses on the cultural aspects of English. While checking this, I realized again how important it is to have higher level students write [...]
As you read all of these posts by Smith’s School owner-teachers you cannot help but feel the passion we all have for what we do. We are much more than just teachers. We are full-fledged members of our communities. We attend a lot of local events and participate actively in our students’ lives in ways [...]
In a previous post Edward explained how to use the Phrase cards to teach the phrases. As Edward explained, you create a sort of short story which uses the phrases. Actually, we have already created a large number of these, but there are still many more to create. Recently I enlisted the help of one [...]
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