Hello everyone, I got a very nice email from an old student who moved to Tokyo from Kobe last year. He shared a very funny story about conducting business in China so I asked his permission to share his email and he agreed. What makes this student so very special is his great effort to [...]
Last week I had three students and decided to use the vocabulary lessons. These are an interesting part of the Smith’s curriculum. They consist of many units each comprising 12 words. The words are random and unrelated for the most part. Some are nouns. Some are verbs and some are adjectives. Some can be used [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I have just had a sunroom built on the house where we live and had some grass planted outside of the sunroom. Adding the sunroom made my yard look just like an English garden (slight exaggeration LOL). Did you know grass is a very important part of English and American culture? The topic of Grass and Lawn Mowers quite often [...]
Last week I held the “Night Out” free talking at Shunju Cafe ( 春秋カフェ ) and 5 current and previous students joined. For last week’s cafe time I prepared a little information about the U.S. National Parks and we talked about some of them, especially the places I had visited. I explained that I had visited Yellowstone [...]
The lesson on “Questions” is a great one. I looked back through my teaching materials from over 20 years ago and found several lists of simple questions. Although short answers could be given in a conversation, I always required the students to make complete sentences as answers to the questions. This helps them to perfect [...]
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 [...]
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