Tag Archives: esl

How I teach Babies and Counting with Beans

Little Akira is making a short sentence and stops in the middle of a sentence.  He pauses for a while and gives up.  What happened?  He wanted to express a number but couldn’t.  He hasn’t learned numbers yet.
Children love numbers and counting, especially when they are younger.  They know it gives them power over their [...]

I Love Live Music; I Live in Japan

When I first moved to Japan, the thing I missed most was the live music scene that I enjoyed back home in Nanaimo, BC, Canada. But I have been slowly uncovering the ive music scene in and around Kyoto, as has Jim in Tokyo. Many annual festivals feature free live outdoor music, such as Taiko [...]

Listening Tactics

When I started to learn Japanese I wanted to listen to anything and everything. This was good, but it was just too difficult. I became frustrated.
Then, I wanted to learn by listening to small selections of Japanese again and again and again. This was also good, but natural conversation is not like [...]