Why English Is Tough in Japan | A New Japan
(Originally posted at Searching for Accurate Maps. Reproduced here with permission.) An interesting article on English education in Japan over at The Diplomat. Referring to the Japanese government’s making English classes compulsory in 5th and 6th grade (that’s the last two years of primary school for you non-U.S. readers) onwards, law-school graduate Hiroki Ogawa writes, [...]
Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (2)
Re-arrange the furniture Assign seats Assign bell-work. Coming up with good bell-work (work that actually engages them and keeps them quiet yet productively busy) is difficult. Problems: Today’s bell-work was not so hot. I was so busy photocopying and cutting and pasting (literally, not digitally) to prepare for today’s classes (which run back-to-back with just [...]
Planned lessons vs unplanned lessons
Quandary. Contradiction. Oxymoron. Storytelling vs. PQA. “Teaching children, not a curriculum.” I’m losing student interest. I’m using stories (Blaine Ray’s Look I Can Talk 1 & 2). Book 2 is more engaging for the university students I teach than book 1 (and I’m using the textbook, not the mini-stories or extended readings). My most difficult [...]
TPRS Workshop in Nagasaki! – Cancelled
Image via Wikipedia Update: This workshop has been cancelled. There will be a 3-day TPRS workshop in Shimbara, Nagasaki, Jan. 15-17. The workshop will be in English with interpretation in Japanese. The workshop will be led by Susan Gross, a TPRS veteran (Ben Slavic mentions her constantly on his blog as his inspiration and teacher), [...]
Japanese Wikipedia resources
As I’m at present teaching a class on World News, and as I found some of the info on Wikiepedia and bias and the Neutral Point of View page to be of possible value to those World News students, I tried to find the equivalent pages in the Japanese version of Wikipedia. Here’s what I [...]
Cultural difference
Teaching English in a foreign country is a whole different game. I read a few teachers blogs, teachers in the US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada. Almost all are teaching in their own native language, and teaching students who mostly have the same native language as the teacher. When you’re teaching students who [...]
Using English (grammar) to process meaning
Steve Herder at Japan Action Research in EFL wrote recently about his joy at hitting on an activity that allowed students to use the grammar they have learned to process meaning. I started to leave a comment, but pretty soon found that it was turning into an essay, so…. Here’s the essay:lack of experience actually [...]
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