John Coleman, the owner and head teacher of the Kawanishi Smith’s School of English and I (Al Bartle of Smith’s School of English – Okamoto) have been working hard to make TOEIC Part 3 type listening lessons for the Smith’s main site. So far we have made 11 lessons. You can see the free online [...]
Smith’s School of English is now providing free online listening lessons for students to practice over and over at home. There are three ways to access these videos. From the Main Site TOEIC Lesson Page 無料TOEICレッスン From the Japanese Blog 無料オンラインTOEICレッスン From the Smith’s School of English YouTube Channel: ssejapan Listening practice is good for all [...]
Smith’s School of English – Okamoto Last week John of the Kawanishi school and I (Okamoto School) helped each other to distribute flyers. Though we started at 7:30 a.m. the time went so fast as we enjoyed chatting during the time. The funny thing is that I think just our talking while we worked made [...]
I recently read an article in TIME magazine about Japan and how, if the current trend continues, the population will drop by 25% to 95 million from the current 127 million by 2050. Also, at that time more than 50% of the population will be over
Since there are many students who read this blog, I have included here one useful way to improve your English conversational ability. I have also posted this in the Japanese soapbox for students who want to read about it in Japanese. Click here for Japanese –>英語上達のための “質問練習” There are many ways to improve your English [...]
Singing popular songs in English is one good way to improve a student’s English ability. I wrote down the lyrics and also the Japanese translations of “Beyonce’s “If I were a boy”. I included the audio track of her song too. It is good for students to try to sing the song along with her [...]
Recently I read in the March 27th issue of the SHUUKAN ST, Student’s weekly newspaper published by the Japan Times, that 57.5% of Japanese companies are expecting new employees to have a TOEIC Score of 500 or above. So I decided to emphasize this in my signage. As you can see to the right, [...]
Wow! That was fun! I just finished making and setting up a new sign on the street in front of my school. My school is on the 2nd floor above a crepe shop called L’air de Temps and a coffee house named Cafe Deco in Okamoto. It is a popular spot as it is about [...]
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 [...]
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