Hot Spa..

When I didn't see my 8pm student in the lobby this evening, I was a bit worried because I remembered him mentioning his wife having some medical condition last time in class. Anyway, it was a great relief when he walked into Smith's School of English Kyobashi 10 minutes later.

Naturally, I asked him about his wife and he was surprised that I remembered our conversation but also happy to tell me that everything was fine and in fact he and his wife took a 2 day trip just last weekend to one of the most famous onsen (hot spa) places in Japan -- Kinosaki! Having been to Kinosaki once in summer myself, I was more than happy to compare notes with him. We had a great conversation about Kinosaki and hot spas in general, I was even invited to Oita since my student was originally from there and his family still lived there! During the conversation, I used the questions from Japan Sea routine without actually informing him of what I was doing, but he did extremely well and got plenty of practice out of it without knowing. Nice conversation AND abundant practice, double bonus!

We then proceeded to the item part of the lesson, which was about passive voice. I pretty much just followed the lesson plan till practice 1. When we went through the passive voice quiz activity, we had a good laugh about each other's lack of Japanese history and sports knowledge, but hey, we were here for an English class! We had so much fun that I didn't even realize that the minute hand was pointing at 45! I had to bring my class to an end by introducing a one-point:" If you go to...., I recommend you to...." As I expected, he had no problem giving me an example once I told him what "recommend" meant. I assured him that I would listen to him and try out the foot spa next time I went to Kinosaki!

Spirit of the season.

Here at Smith's School of English we have students of all levels. They range from true beginners to confident vets looking to maintain their exposure to English. Today's lesson was with a set of particularly high level students. This means to me that the lesson could really go in a lot of unplanned directions. I always prepare a lesson regardless of student level but I'm always ready to abandon that lesson plan in the even that the students pull me in a different direction of interest.

With that in mind I started out by reviewing the one points from their previous lessons. This went smoothly and the students all came up with their own original phrases with only a bit of support from me. After this I moved into a review of some key questions from the Smith's routines. I facilitated this by asking them to discuss each others weekends and ask expansive questions of each other. Once they successfully demonstrated use of all the questions I had expected of them we moved into a discussion topic as an Item.

Not unexpectedly, something interesting came up in the course of discussing their weekends. One student remarked that she sees many Japanese customers buying Christmas presents at her shop and this struck her as odd since most Japanese people aren't practicing Christians. What an interesting topic! We went on to discuss what Christmas means to each student and what it means to them. We also discussed how they perceive Christmas not only in Japan but in western countries. They had lots of practice using English and had some pretty interesting stories to tell! Before I knew it we had finished the lesson and it was time for a new one point so we finished with that.

Catching up on last week.

Today's first lesson was enjoyable. This student and I have quite a long history so we were happy to see eachother again. We dispensed with the one point rather quickly since he demonstrated understanding easily and he had some things he wanted to tell me. I was happy to listen as a friend and at the sime time keep an ear out for possible mistakes or confusion on his part that i could help him out with later on. I always make a point to let students finish their thoughts completely in a natural flow. Then, once they have finished, put some example sentences up on the board for them to fix themselves. This way I can be sure I' ve drawn their attention to weak points in which they need to improve and at the same time I have given them a chance to express themselves in natural conversation without making them self conscious. Its all about building confidence.

While he told me about recent events in his life I made sure to toss out some questions from the Smith's School of English curriculum routines. He responded well.

After that I went through a "Let's Talk" article with him about relationships. It spurred some interesting extended conversation and questions on his part. We continued to go through the questions until there was no time left in the lesson. I introduced a new one point and asked him to prepare some examples for the next lesson. See you next week!

Newbie

My 8pm on Thursday was a basic level student who had only been here with Smith's School of English Kyobashi for 2 weeks. Before the class, I had chatted with the previous teacher and was told that the new student was a bit shy. I decided not to do anything too challenging and try to keep the atmosphere nice and friendly to him.

After greeting him in the lobby and offered him a nice cup of hot tea, I showed him to the classroom. I spent a few minutes introducing myself and getting him to talk about himself a bit, which I knew shouldn't be hard as he had done it with the other teacher in the very first trial lesson. As expected, he was relived and happy to use the sentence patterns and some new vocabulary he learned earlier to introduce himself. I gave him a big thumb-up after his introduction since the kid really did a great job applying what he learned from his trial here.

We then went over his previous one-point, and proceeded to the Routine part of the class. Since he had done routine 1 once, I thought it would be a good idea to review and consolidate. I also prepared some picture cards from Time 1 for him to string together "John's Day" using the stretching skill taught in routine 1.

I then introduced him to the item of the day, "ordinal numbers". This lesson is always good for basic level students because it provides a lot of activities and students get a lot of chances to practice. Once I wrote down some ordinal numbers on the board and listed the 3 major usages, it was time to put the knowledge in use. I pulled out the curriculum activity book and basically followed the practice and development part of the lesson plan.

By the end of the 45 minute-lesson, the shy new student was no where to be found, instead I found myself giving a one-point to this smiley chatty university boy! It surely felt good to be the teacher who improved the confidence of your students!

Question, question, who's got the question?

Today's second lesson was with a slightly higher level set of students. Three students in the lesson means there is basically unlimited chances for student to student interaction. I always make sure to take advantage of this to ensure a high student talk time and a low teacher talk time. Two of the three students share the same one point so I had 2 one point's to contend with total. By having each student come up with their own example for each of the one points we ended up with 6 nice example sentences that led to some additional questions by the students, and some nice opportunities for student to student questioning.

After that we moved on to a lesson on questions. This encouraged the students to ask questions of each other and of me as well. I made sure to keep my answers succinct so as to reduce teacher talk time. If hey wanted to know more about my answer they were welcome to ask further expansive questions all they wanted, but I wasn't going to give it away for free. They had to ask for it. I encouraged the students to give at least two statements in answer to any question asked of them. This pushed them beyond their normal safety zone of the short simple answer and into some new material. That's where the learning can occur.

The students had many questions for me about how to give the answers they wanted to. I encouraged them to try on their own, and then supported with board work when necessary. After that we reviewed some questions from from a Smith's School of English Routine and finished off with a new one point. Asking questions is hard to to so i was glad the students got so much practice with that skill today!

Hard core review.

Today's first lesson was with 2 very low level students. After going over the one points from the previous lesson and having each student practice the other's examples i asked them to practice some very basic, natural conversation about what they did last weekend. This exercise was a join review of the Past 1 Item and of the basic routine 1 questions. They used vocabulary that they had previously learned and I was able to guide them with questions that they were familiar with. It was a pretty strict exercise, I wanted to make sure they really understood what was being asked of them and how one would answer naturally. In the end we had a board full of nice example sentences that the students were able to then use in turn to describe not only the activity that brought up the example in the first place, but a myriad of other things they had done last weekend as well.

After a rigorous review I moved them into some new material. I don't normally recommend doing review before introducing new material, but the class just flowed that way today. I made sure to keep he introduction of the new item light in comparison to the previous activity. Always good to leave the lesson feeling light and unburdened. This portion was highly structured so the rules were very easy to follow. After showing a few examples the students caught right on and we had a blast.

We finished up with a new one point. Today I used "I have a lot/nothing in common with (A). For example, (B). I gave a few examples and asked the students to demonstrate understanding. Once I was satisfied that they understood I asked them to prepare some examples of their own for the next lesson and sent them on their merry way.

Long time no see.

Today I'm cover for another teacher who requested the day off so I'm here earlier than usual. The best news there is that I get to meet up with some students that I haven't seen in a long time. 2 students actually. They expressed that they were really surprised and happy to see me after such a long time. I felt good about that. After getting reacquainted a bit and calming down we did a review of last weeks one points. I like have each student take a shot at making an example sentence from the other students one point, even if they haven't seen it before. They usually get a pretty good idea from the example provided by the student who learned it in class last week. If not, I lend a hand.

After that went continued on to an Item which was perfect for pair work. They asked and answered each others questions while I listened to pronunciation or grammar errors. Once they seemed to have the hang of it, I added a few expansive questions so they could be more open ended in their answers. We also did some practice with the questions from routine 1 in order to give them a review.

This was a fun lesson and the time went by rather quickly since every one was in such high spirits. Before we knew it, it was already time for the one point! They came up with some examples on the spot which I was pleased about. I asked them to also come up with a new sentence for next week and bid them farewell. Hope to see them again soon!

Have a nice weekend!

My 5pm student today was probably one of the best English speakers here at Smith's School of English Kyobashi. He had double lessons scheduled today, since I knew his 6pm would be with 2 other students, I thought it might be a good idea to give him as much attention as possible for his one-to-one lesson with me.

As he walked in my classroom, I greeted him cheerfully and asked if he had any plans for the long weekend. His face lit up and happily told me that he would be going out with his girlfriend to Kyoto. Since I myself was planning on visiting Kyoto on Monday, I was eager to get some recommendations from a local. He was more than happy to share his previous trips in Kyoto and started telling me all the best spots for different seasons as well as his personal top 10 list of Kyoto shrines and gardens. From there we also had a great conversation about the similarities and differences in Chinese and Japanese temples, gardens and cultures.

It was fantastic to have such a enlightening conversation with a student and find out interesting information about Japan and Japanese culture, while at the same time, I did not forget that I was in the middle of an English lesson. He was almost fluent in English, but like many, he still made small grammatical mistakes. I jotted down 4 mistakes that he made during our conversation and pointed them out at the end of our class, which I thought he appreciated very much.

Well, I am going to take my student's advice and check out the Kyoto Botanical Gardens for the weekend then!

Recovery!

Today's first lesson was a huge relief to me. Why? Simply because the student showed up for his lesson. This student has been having an alarming amount of heart complications recently. When he doesn't show up for a lesson I know it's one of two things: He is in the hospital getting some sort of proceedure done or... I don't want to think about it. But, as I said he showed up to the lesson today and I was glad to see he was alright.

After checking his one point I decided to use some Smith's Routine questions to find out about his condition. As it turns out as of Monday this past week the treatment he had been undergoing finally resulted in a successful recovery! I was really glad to hear it. He had been going to the hospital nearly every day for emergencies but he told me it's been almost a week since he's needed to go. What a relief!

After the question and answer review we moved on to an item where we discussed bad habits using Gerunds and Infinitives. The mood of the lesson was extremely light and carefree. We had a lot of laughs. We finished off with a new one point and I bid him farewell. At the end of the lesson I said, "See you next week." He responded "Yup, see you then." I was glad that for the first time in weeks i could believe with out worry that he really will be here.

Questions

I started my afternoon shift with 2 lovely orange level students today. As usual, they were both right on time for the class and happy to be here at Smith's School of English Kyobashi.

After the pleasantries, I directed them to the board where I had written down their one-point from the previous lesson, "I am sick of... because...". It didn't take long for both of them to give me an example since both girls did their homework nicely. I then introduced the item of the day, an intermediate lesson "Questions". From their lesson reports, I knew both of them had done this particular lesson about half a year ago, and it always helps to review!

I first asked my students to tell me the "wh" question words that they knew, and wrote them down on the board one by one, and like most people, they forgot "how", which I then added to the list. Instead of following the lesson plan exactly, I decided to let these two be creative and ask each other questions using the "wh" words on the board. This went a lot better than I had expected. One of the girls started with a yes or no question "Will you visit a shrine on New Year's Day next year?", with a "Yes" from the other student, their dialogue just went on! By the end of it, I found out that one of them was taking a one-day bus trip to Shimane with her friends from work, and the other was visiting a local shrine with her family as she had done in the past 25 years!

We then moved on to the practice part of the item, where students were required to ask 3 types of questions to find out what animal card I was holding in my hands. After going through all the new vocabulary from the activity, the game began! It was great to see how much they both enjoyed this activity which probably reminded them of childhood memories, how excited they got when they guessed the right animal, and most importantly, they got to practise asking so many questions while having great fun!

It was definitely a lesson to remember for both me and my students.

A lesson in love.

Today's lesson was with two high level students. We started out with a review of their respective one points. I asked each student to demonstrate understanding of their own one point from the previous lesson, but of their partner's one point as well. It's a fun exercise.

For Today's item I used techniques learned in Smith's training to direct a guided conversation between the students. They talked about the pros and cons of meeting people on the internet and potentially dating them. This included their own personal opinions about the pros and cons of such a practice. It was interesting to listen to from my perspective and I was able to support their English practice with both grammar and vocabulary along the way. A question and answer session at the end wrapped this round up nicely.

After that I reviewed them on routine 8 by telling them a story in short bursts, then asking them to ask me questions to get me to continue the story. They didn't always use the questions I expected but as long as they were logical and grammatically correct it was alright.

At the end of the lesson I presented the one point, "I don't mind..." which brought up the difference between "I don't mind," and "I don't care." This kind of nuance can be tricky even for high level students. We didn't have enough time to break it down in great detail today so the students will prepare example sentences to be discussed at the beginning of their next lesson. Now they have something to look forward to!

Hobbies

It was a busy evening at Smith's School of English Kyobashi yesterday, and I started my evening with a class of 3 red and green level students.

Mr S had cancelled his classes the previous week for his painting exhibition, so I naturally asked him about his exhibition once all students settled down comfortably in their chairs. He was very excited about it and eagerly showed us many photos of the exhibition as well as his two paintings. We were all very surprised by the excellent work and the other two students had a lot of questions for Mr S, which was fantastic because at their level, the purpose of the class is for them to communicate with each other and with the teacher. Since painting was only one of Mr S's many hobbies, I had no problem getting Mr S to talk about his other hobbies, and the conversation went on smoothly to the different hobbies the other 2 students had.

We all had such a good time that I hated to bring the class to the end.

Abandoning the lesson plan.

Today's lesson was fun not only in the usual way, but also because the students pushed it in an unexpected direction. We were doing the Smith's School of English Item lesson, Frequency 1 when the students began asking extra questions about the word "almost". It can be a bit difficult to use since it is grammatically different from the Japanese equivalent.

We took turns creating example sentences with the appropriate pair word for almost. For example, almost always, never, anyone, no one, anywhere, nowhere, every time, every day, etc. The students were very interested and after a few examples they understood the concept quite well. They enjoyed making up their own examples and I was happy to see them demonstrate their understanding.

After that we went into a review of a routine and finished with a one point as usual. After the lesson I reflected on how pleasant it was to expect the lesson to go one way, and have it go in a completely different direction. I guess even when you plan the lesson you never can tell quite how it will go so it's go to be ready to flex!

Entertaining a foreigner

There are a significant number of high level students who have no problem expressing what they think or reading through a difficult piece of news material, but choke at it when asked to explain Okonomiyaki to a first-time foreign visitor in Osaka. This lesson is designed for such students.

My 6pm was a yellow level student who had exactly the same problem as mentioned earlier. So after we exchanged greetings and reviewed her previous one-point, I pulled out the thick chunk of Japanese word cards and explained to her what we were going to do. She recognized her own weakness as well, so when she saw the cards, she smiled and took a deep breath to get ready. Instead of asking her to match the English translations with the Japanese cards, from experience I knew it worked better if the student had to actually think of an appropriate translation for himself, and that was exactly what I asked my 6pm student to do. She went through the first few words without much trouble, and then came "takoyaki", "nabe", "yakitori", "anago" and "okonomiyaki". She laughed and joked that she wished she were not Japanese now. Anyway, instead of giving her the answer right away, I inspired her to come up with her translation by giving her hints and guiding her through the thinking process. This worked extremely well, by the end of the activity, she had no problem translating all the food cards into appropriate English, some were even better than the original ones, e.g. she described Okonomiyaki as a kind of Japanese pizza made from a mixture of finely cut cabbage, eggs, pork and flour, served on a hot plate with special sauce as well as seaweed and bonito fish flakes!

While it was the aim of this lesson to help her tackle with her weakness, I thought it would be too much if I spent the whole 45 minutes on it. After I complimented her on her great job of translating, I asked her what her favorite food was and any good restaurants that she'd recommend. Our conversation flew from there naturally and thanks to her, I now have a lot of good Nabe places to try out for the winter!

Used to

This is a lesson from the Build-up level, but as it only focuses on one grammar point and offers a lot of practice, I sometimes use it with pre-intermediate or intermediate level students. Mr T at 7pm tonight usually shares his class with 2 girls who are slightly lower than his level, but he was by himself this time and I decided to give him something that required a bit of extra effort.

After I checked his previous one-point, I introduced him to today's topic by writing down "Used to" on the board. Mr T nodded as if he knew exactly what it meant, so I asked him to give me an example. It was then that I realised that he had got it confused with "be used to". I then explained the difference to him, and gave him an example sentence using a pair of haircut cards, "she used to have short hair in high school, but now she has long hair". He understood the difference quickly and I moved on to let him match up the picture cards in pairs and make sentences out of them following my example. Mr T had to stop from time to time to ask me for help regarding new words and expressions, but other than that he had no problem finishing the task.

I then decided to make the lesson more personal and conversational, so I turned to page 122 of the build-up activity book and started asking Mr T "Did you used to..." questions. It was interesting to find out that he used to work part-time in college at a fish market which he absolutely hated because of the horrible smell and early hours, that he used to go diving a few times a year but had to cut back to once a year now because his wife was tightening the purse string, and that he used to work overtime a lot but since the new governor cut the city employees' salary, he was out of his office once the clock hit 5:30pm.

Our lesson finished with a one-point example from Mr T, " I am looking forward to diving in Okinawa next year".

Freedom vs. structure.

Today's first lesson interesting as usual. After exchanging greetings i set about checking the last lesson's one point with this man-to-man student. This student often brings in his own topics and since he pays for private lessons I'm happy to indulge these requests as long as they can be dealt with on the spot and in the period of a single lesson.

Today he wanted to discuss a movie he had recently seen. This was fortuitous since the Smith's School of English curriculum has a lesson specifically for talking about movies in the "Let's Talk" section. I was able to guide the conversation and encourage the student to talk about various aspects of the movie he saw using the handy set of questions from that lesson. The student probably didn't even realize he was being led through a lesson. More likely he thought he was talking freely about a topic he brought up while I asked for more details. I'm always glad when a student can feel such a sense of freedom in the lesson and still practice very specific conversational skills.

After a while all that freedom tired the student out a bit! So we moved into the review of an Item lesson. This was very structured and gave the student the chance to give concrete and correct answers in a controlled environment. This can be edifying in it's own was both for the student and myself.

As usual we wrapped up with a new one point phrase. Today I chose one from the A section; "I have no idea." Seems pretty useful to me!

Adjectives 2

Sometimes the students like to talk about their family or friends, depending on who they happened to be hanging out with on the weekend. But when it comes to describing the people that are very influential or important in their lives, they tend to clam up and become nervous. They aren't used to describing people, either their physical appearance or their character traits. So using adjectives 2 really helps them to create a vocabulary list that they can apply to everyone that they know.

Two of the students that regularly come to Smith's School of English Kyobashi together really enjoy learning English as a team. They've been coming here for probably as long as I've been here... if not longer. They know everything that there is to know about a best friend... except how to describe what that friend looks like. So we opened up the text to the adjectives 2 lesson after reviewing the one point and started in on the vocabulary. Most of the words were new or forgotten so we had some fun drawing pictures to identify with the unfamiliar vocab such as pointed, bald, and beard. Once they had a firm understanding of the vocab, I gave the simple sentences to play with while using a bunch of picture cards of faces to describe. We started off with simple sentences like, "He has a round face," or, "He is bald."

I then mixed up the cards and told the students that we'd be playing a 'Guess Who?' game. One student would describe a mystery man and the other would have to guess which character she was referring to. This went really well with the students taking turns giving as many clues as possible and the other guessing the right card.

At the end, I had the students describe their fathers one at a time while the other drew a picture of him. They both had a field day with this part, exhibiting the descriptive words and abilities that they'd absorbed, as well as their humorous drawing skills.

Questions

Regardless of the level, students always seem to have trouble with asking questions. Answering them is easy enough, but asking them kind of puts the student on the spot. In order to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling of trying to figure out what to ask and how to ask it, we spent a great deal of time practicing questions in the last lesson.

One of the students - a salaryman - has absolutely no problems answering questions but has a lot of difficulty asking them. One problem is that he has picked up a lot of slang from watching English movies and doesn't know what material is appropriate for usage and what should be left on the big screen. The other student is a bit lower in level and is completely unaccustomed to asking questions. So we would be going through the lesson slowly in order to build a solid foundation for asking questions.

We first started off with some simple questions like, "How are you?" and, "What is your favorite...?" The latter was especially useful since both students weren't familiar with the word 'favorite'. From there, we started to build onto the questions and change the tenses as the students became more comfortable. We eventually ended up with interesting questions like, "Where do you want to go for your next vacation?" and "Why are you studying English." By the end of the lesson, the students were both extremely happy to have some fun questions to ask in their next class at Smith's.

Prepostions

When I saw the names of the students in my 7pm schedule the other day, I had just the perfect lesson plan for them.

After we reviewed the one point from the previous lesson, I wrote down on the board " Where is the pencil?", placed my pencil under the lesson plan folder, and asked the question. Once I got the right answer, I moved on to write down the 12 commonly used prepositions on the white board, asked the two pink students to translate them into Japanese for me in order to check comprehension, and then proceeded to page 16 of the activity book, where students had to answer where the different cats were using the pre-taught prepositions.

Since they both had done this lesson once a year ago and they went through the first activity pretty easily, I decided to challenge them with practice 2, picture dictation. It turned out that this was their first time to do this activity, and when I explained what was required from them, they both looked very enthusiastic. We had great fun with drawing the pictures and I was surprised how good both of them were at drawing! Plus they got most of the prepositions right!!

I then moved on to the routine part of the lesson, did a review of shopping 1 with the two girls, and finished our class with a one-point: I prefer (a) to (b) because (c).

Getting ready for 9:00

My next student is coming in at 9:00 tonight so it's time to get a worthwhile lesson together for him. This student is man-to-man, which means he has reserved a private lesson so there will be no other students to contend with. The major plus to this arrangement is I can take time with the student's file and really tailor the lesson to that student's specific needs. Some times this could mean a very specialized field of discussion. In a group lesson this might be unfair to other students but in a man-to-man lesson the sky is the limit.

Fortunately planning a 45 minute lesson using the Smith's curriculum is a snap thanks to the intuitive system and training I received. I first check the student's file to find what one point the previous teacher gave the student at the end of his previous lesson. This is the same one point I'll start today's lesson with. Now I need to choose the main peice of material to provide for the student to practice on. Since he is a fairly high level student I'll take advantage of the Smith's curriculum material that is specifically tailored for higher level students. These are often open ended and can lead to interesting expansive answers from the student. This allows me to examine their natural speech and gives me a chance to identify and subsequently correct weak points specific to that student. I'll go with a phrasal verb card lesson since he hasn't had one in a while.

With the main portion of my lesson selected I just need to choose something to review and a new one point. Based on his file he practiced routine 7 recently. I'll give him a review of the questions to keep him fresh in using them. I plan on using the one point B 27, but I may decide to change it as the lesson progresses. Being familiar with the curriculum is my greatests asset since I can always change the plan to suit the students demonstrated needs as the lesson progresses.

Trip down memory lane

Today's lesson was a refreshing mix-up for the students and myself. We started out with a review of last weeks ones point as usual. These students all took my lesson last week so they came back with the same one point. We had fun going through each of the students' examples in detail and practicing in turn.

After that we launched into a full review of all basic routines from the Smith's School of English curriculum. Each student took turns going through using only the hint bar. I was pleased that they remembered most of the material very well. Review is of he utmost importance when it comes to English conversation.

Once we finished the review we began practicing the next step in the basic routines, routine 2. The initial stretch of this routine can be a bit challenging for students as it deals with the difference between "get on" and "ride" in English. Since these two words are commonly expressed using only a single word in Japanese the students had questions about usage. I provided some more contextual examples and let them come up with some of their own to account for comprehension. We finished off with a new one point and that ends another enjoyable lesson!

What ticks you off?

I had a group of green and red students tonight, they always had classes together and since they all knew each other very well, I decided to start our class with a bit of free conversation first, then move to the Let's talk unit: What ticks you off, and finish the lesson off with a one-point, B4.

Once everyone settled down comfortably in their seats, I initiated the conversation casually with a simple " so, anything new?" The guy at the end of the table smiled and said that nothing much happened recently, but he had taken a long trip to Thailand a couple of months before. Since I hadn't taught him for a while, he was quite happy to share his experience. The ladies were also glad because they both had been to Thailand and we had a really enjoyable conversation with everyone expressing their opinions and talking about their experiences in Samui Island, Phi Phi Island, Phuket and Bangkok. It must have been the best responses I had got from students for a while!

The main topic for today was a bit negative, but then again, it was also very helpful indeed to the students as everyone gushed the things/people that really ticked him/her off. Not surprisingly, what ticked the ladies off was the rude attitude from older Japanese men and the way they treated women as inferior, and what ticked the 30-years odd business guy was the incompetence of his boss!

Well, at least we finished our class with a very positive note: "I am looking forward to ...", and I was glad that everyone had something good to look forward to.

Past and present routines.

Today's lesson at Smith's School of English was with two low level students. We started out with their one points as usual. Since they had different one points we enjoyed practicing each one with each student. After that we moved into a review of an Item they had practiced previously: Past 1.

In order to practice the Item Past 1 we jumped right to the cool of section. I suggested the students ask each other about what they had done the previous day. Each student took three turns asking and answering about something they did. We had some chances for correction which we worked out together on the board. Good practice! Next we moved into the main part of today's lesson: the routine.


I gave them a chance to perform the first step of routine 1 (sentences 1-7) since they had seen it before. They were indeed due for a review of this material but as they practiced it i could see it was coming back to them. Once they were in the right mode we went on to practice the next set of sentences 8-14. After that it was just perfect timing to end the lesson with a one point. Today we did "I'm (not) familiar with this area. Useful!

Shopping 2

I prepared an item of passive voice for my 1pm students, but ended up just doing the routine of Shopping 2 as one of the two students didn't show up, and the usually quite one suddenly became rather talkative! In fact, I had to say that I was a bit surprised when she started telling me about her new purchase of a digital TV, her ideas about cable, optical fiber, sky perfect and her weekend adventure with her friends in Nagoya! It was so great that she actually wanted to share so many of her thoughts with me, keeping in mind for the past 4 weeks, her friend had been doing most of the talking in our classes.

Anyway, I thought this was a great opportunity to engage her as much as possible. So instead of following my lesson plan, I encouraged her to tell me as much as she could, giving her help from time to time with grammar and vocabulary. 25 minutes into the lesson, I had listed quite a long list of new words in the vocab box. I decided not to overwhelm her with this free conversation style and moved on to the routine part of the lesson.

She was an orange level student, but had done all the basic and pre-intermediate routines. So I thought we could try the easiest one of intermediate routines, shopping 2. As usual, I laid out the L shape on the board and we went through a coupe of new words pretty quickly. For the L&Q practice, I had to read the story a second time by her request, but she managed to answer all the questions without too many problems.

One point for the day, "I am looking forward to ...." She was meeting her friends for dinner, so there was our example!

Past 1

For the newer students who haven't much experience in English it's usually a good thing to stick to the basic lessons, especially for pink only students. One of the newest additions to Smith's School of English Kyobashi was one such student. So, knowing her level, I chose to do Basic 1 as her item.

We had to spend the first few minutes on her previous one point because she'd never reviewed one before and had totally forgotten it. After that was okay, we moved onto the one point.

Seeing as how her vocabulary is very low, we spent a great deal of time going over the new verbs that she was not familiar with. She reverted to Japanese quite often so I slowly built up her confidence until she felt better about trying to speak in English instead. Once she had all the verbs down, I double checked by going through some action pictures. She needed to identify verbs like swim, dance, and eat. Considering her level, she went through this part at a good rate. After that was done, we started to get into the simple past. Of course, this was all new to her so we frequently paused so that she could take notes. Eventually, she ended up with a nicely organized verb chart with simple and past tense. We went through the cards two more times with her answering in both tenses. From there, we had just enough time to create a few sentences in which she could practice the past tense.

The next lesson will be very useful in reviewing the past and present tense to reinforce her memory.

Frequency 1

I had a group of three pink level students last night, two of whom were a bit shy and always attended classes at the same time, and the other one was quite a bit more confident in speaking. I decided to focus our lesson time on Frequency.

The good thing about this lesson plan is that it is quite flexible, and there are loads of cards that can be used selectively for your class. As I had two shy students in the group, I decided to follow the presentation part of the lesson plan, but change the format slightly. Instead of asking students to write down the adverbs of frequency in different percentage brackets, I laid out on the desk the 100% card and the 0% card, always and never, and then asked them to pick out the best spot for the rest of the frequency adverb cards in my hand one by one. This way if they wanted to make a quick change or correct their mistakes, they could do it by themselves easily, without the embarrassment of having me red-marking or erasing their answers on the board.

Once the students familiarized themselves with the degrees of the adverbs and the pronunciation, I had them making short dialogues using the picture cards by asking " Do you ever....". Since this was the second time for them to do the frequency lesson, I didn't spend much time on this activity, instead I moved on to practice 2, which was much more challenging as it not only required students to come up with anwsers based on their real life, but also required students to carry on the conversation. While it seemed difficult for the two friends at the beginning, after 2 more examples from me and the more confident student, they got the hang of it and started really enjoying the small conversations. Before we all realised it, it was the end of our 45-minute class!

If... will

I was so glad to see the two ladies that showed up for tonight's class. I hadn't seen them in a while and we were all excited to do some catching up. We tend to have an interest in the same type of fashion so we spent a few minutes chatting about new hair styles and fall fashions before moving into the lesson.

They had absolutely no problems with their previous one point, "I've been looking forward to (a)," so we were able to get right into the item after a short review.

Setting out the flash cards, I got them started on matching up the If... Will pairs. Logically, they paired up the cards based on what they thought made up a good story. They compared ideas in Japanese with each other before confidently taking turns matching the cards up. Once they'd finished with that, I wrote up a sample sentence on the board, "If I exercise, I will lose weight." One lady changed the sentence to, "If I exercise, I will look beautiful," which was another great example. From there, they took turns going through all the cards and making up sentences to explain the scenarios in front of them. They'd done an excellent job with that so I figured that I'd challenge them a little with the next part.

I told them that now we'd be making up questions to ask each other by using, "What would you do if...?" My first question was, "What would you do if you had super powers?" They were really enthusiastic about answering a question which required them to use their imaginations. One student responded with, "If I had super powers, I would fly." For a little extra detail, I asked her where she would fly. The next student said that she would want to be able to see the future. But not too far. Half a year would be good enough for her to perhaps win the lottery.

Having gotten through the item while correcting grammatical errors and boosting the students' vocabulary, I shifted the focus to a review of the questions from Routine 1. And from there, we wrapped things up nicely with a new one point, "I can't stand (a) because (b)," that they would need to remember for next time.

How did it go in Tokyo?

When I walked in the school yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to find M, one of the students at former Horie school sitting on the couch waiting nervously for his first lesson here at Smith's School of Kyobashi. The relieved look on his face when I cheerfully greeted him was just priceless. He asked me if I would be teaching him and I assured him of that knowing the girls would have considered his situation and scheduled me as his teacher for the day.

Since I knew that M had been the only student in most of his classes at Horie, and that he had done almost everything in the curriculum at his level, I told him that the chance of having 1 or 2 classmates would be very high here at Kyobashi, and we would also have to do some review of the curriculum from basic level. He was very understanding and had no problem with my suggestion. Once that was out of the way, I decided to move to the lesson I prepared for him, simple past tense.

I first introduced the two basic categories of verbs in past tense by writing down two groups of verbs and then eliciting their past forms from M. He went through them pretty quickly with only a couple of minor mistakes. I then showed him the picture cards and asked him to make one sentence using a past time out of each card, e.g. "I ate sushi for dinner last night".

After we were done with this practice, I decided to ask him about his week in Tokyo as he told me earlier that he had an exhibition of his stained-glass works there. He was very happy and eager to share his experience with me, but in the process made quite a few mistakes with the tense and verbs. I corrected him only once in a while as I didn't want to discourage him, but I jotted down a few things that I thought were important and pointed them out to him afterwards, which he accepted appreciatively.

Just before the class ended, M mentioned that he had been a bit worried about changing to a new environment, but now he believed that he had made the right decision coming to Kyobashi.

Must / Have to

A lot of the students are not aware of the existence of must/have to, never mind knowing the difference between them, so this lesson comes as a bit of a shock to most of them. My last student this evening was no different. Before I even started the item, I asked her if she knew the difference and she answered me with a terrified, blank stare.

I started off by explaining the difference between must and have to to her. Must expresses a strong obligation or personal feeling whereas have to means that there are external obligations involved. I gave her the example of, "I must go to bed earlier because I'm always tired," and then, "I have to pay my bills," telling her that if I don't I'll get into trouble with my telephone company. She had a pretty good idea of must and have to by that point so we started to give examples for each, leading in with flash cards.

She did an excellent job of separating must and have to situations and was extremely happy to be able to express both with regards to her personal experiences.

Enjoying the past.

Today’s loop lesson revolved around basic Smith’s School of English routines and a review of the past 4 item which we covered together the previous week.

We started out by reviewing the previous week’s one point: Even if… The students had prepared their example sentences before coming into class. I was happy to see this level of commitment from the students. Each student told me their example sentences and I wrote them on the board in turn. I then highlighted or blanked out any mistaken words. Then the students fixed their errors together so we ended up with 3 nice example sentences using the one point “Even if…”

Next we began to practice the questions from the Smith’s School of English basic routines. They were familiar with the questions from practicing them previously but I wrote them up of the board to make sure the target material was clear to everyone. Then we practiced changing the questions from their standard present tense for to past tense. We then used the questions to ask each other various things about our recent holiday weekend including Culture Day. I let the students ask me a few questions first to get the ball rolling and then transitioned into letting them ask each other using the board to correct mistakes along the way. Good practice with lots of talking time.

We finished up the lesson with a low impact review of the Item lesson Past 4. Using the supplementary material students asked and answered questions with me listening and supporting when necessary. After that we wrapped up with a new one point. What a nice lesson!

Past 3

It’s always fun to get to know students by hearing about their past experiences and maybe learning a few interesting things about them that I never would’ve guessed before working on the Past 3 lesson. Past Participle is very difficult for a lot of students because they don’t usually use that form of the verb. They’re so used to relying on simple past tense that they just assume that it will fit into a past participle sentence without any problems.

When I started out the item with the students – two men and a woman – I first gave them the opportunity to use the flash cards to make up, “Have you ever?” questions. This only required them to fill in the blanks with what was on the flash cards so it wasn’t very difficult, but it did give them a chance to familiarize themselves with the sentence structure and verb tenses. After they were comfortable with this part, I moved onto a different set of flash cards that had the verbs in the simple present form. The students were then called upon to conjugate the verbs into the simple past and past participle form. While the simple past was fairly easy for them, except for a few tricky ones that they hesitated over, the past participle proved to be a lot more challenging. To make it easier for them, I wrote a chart up on the board with the verbs in question and filled in the ones that they didn’t know. After taking some notes, we took another look at the flash cards and the, “Have you ever?” question format. Now the students would need to ask the questions after having changed the verbs into the past participle format. After a bit of practice and some quick consultations with their notes, the students were able to smoothly ask each other questions like, “Have you ever ridden a scooter?” with but a short pause while they changed ‘ride’ to ‘ridden’ in their heads.

We did some more practice with the past participle by using the curriculum and some accompanying activities. With some time remaining, we played a truth or lie game that the students really enjoyed. The students took turn claiming to have done something (like eaten frog legs) and the others would have to guess if it was true or a lie. We kept score on the board and sometimes added a new verb to the list when one of the students would want to use a sentence with a verb that we hadn’t covered yet. This was a really great lesson for getting all of the students involved and for learning fun facts about each other.

A last minute change

The lesson plans at Smith’s School of English, Kyobashi, is organized in such a way that there are various activities to do throughout. This is mainly thanks to the 4-point loop which incorporates various parts of the curriculum into the lesson. It makes for a well-rounded segment of learning that the students really enjoy and look forward to. But sometimes a student will show up with a request or a different lesson plan in mind. When that happens, I feel confident in being able to alter the lesson to the student’s needs.

One of my lessons just happened to need such altering the other day. I had already gone through the ET and was halfway through the item when the student asked me if it was true that I was from Canada. I confirmed that I was indeed Canadian and she went on to tell me that she was looking into a homestay experience in Canada and wanted to know more about my home country. Seeing as how there weren’t any other students in the class, I took the liberty of changing the lesson at the last minute. If she was preparing for homestay, I’d be only too happy to help her. However, her level was not high enough to switch over to directed conversation from the Let’s Talk folder on hometowns and I wanted to keep the lesson structured for her so I quickly pulled up the Questions lesson plan instead. I figured that she wouldn’t mind improving her grammar and ability to ask appropriate questions so I wrote the questions words list up on the board and let her go at it.

She was very eager to ask me many questions about Canada but had to take it slowly in order to find the correct question word to start off her sentence with. I gave her a few examples by asking about her hometown, the weather and such, before prompting her to ask similar questions. She continued by using one of her previous one point questions, “Which do you prefer?” She asked me, “Which do you prefer, Toronto or Vancouver?” I’ve never been past the Vancouver airport so I told her that I wouldn’t be able to give her an honest answer. She switched the question to, “What is famous in Toronto and Vancouver?” I asked her to be a little more specific and she clarified by explaining that she wanted to know good sightseeing spots so I told her about the CN Tower and Roger’s Center in Toronto and the not-so-far off Niagara Falls. Having heard a bit about Vancouver from my brother, I told her about the beautiful mountains and lakes, as well as some famous ice cream parlor.

Now it was my turn to ask her questions. I asked her why she wanted to go to Canada and inquired as to how long she intended to stay. She responded excitedly by saying that her friend had already been to Canada and really loved it. She intended to stay for a year by getting a working holiday visa. By the end of the lesson, she’d gotten answers for all of her questions and was very happy to tell me that she’d decided to spend half her time in Vancouver and the other half in Toronto.

4 point Loop

ET: One of my lessons tonight fit perfectly into the loop in that all four parts of it were very well rounded so there was ample time to spend on each part. First, there as the review of the previous one point. I’d already looked into the student’s file to prepare for the lesson so I was only waiting for the right moment to jog his memory. He’d been talking about a restaurant that he’d gone to over the weekend, an Italian restaurant that he frequently visited. I then took the opportunity to introduce a famous seafood restaurant in Canada to him – Red Lobster. I asked him if he knew of Red Lobster and he replied with a simple ‘no.’ So, I asked him if he knew of any other phrase that he could express ‘no’ with. He thought about it for a second before recalling the one point, “I’ve never heard of it.”

ITEM: On we moved to the item. Today we would be using Comparisons 2 since he’d never done it before. It was fresh and new and he attentively followed the introduction of the examples and took great notes from the board. After giving him the basic format of how to compare A to B, I wrote up some comparisons on the board, leaving blank spaces where he could fill in the appropriate adjectives. For example, “Angelina Jolie isn’t as __________ as Jodie Foster.” He started off by sticking in nouns in the blank spaces until I told him that adjectives were necessary and why. After the third sentence, he’d gotten the hang of it and was coming up with some pretty decent adjectives. To build up his vocabulary, I suggested some alternatives, which he carefully jotted down in his new vocab box in the top corner of his page. Once we’d finished that, we moved onto the agreeing and disagreeing. We flipped over to a page in the text with some interesting statements that he was required to agree or disagree with. Agreeing was easy because it meant repeating the original statement as part of the answer. But we had to work a bit on the disagreeing because he had trouble rearranging the sentence to express his opinions.

ROUTINE: After the item, we reviewed Routine 6. Seeing as how the routine was being used as a review, I stuck to the question portion to fit it into the time frame we were left with. He’d been exposed to these particular questions before so he had a general idea of how to answer them. Still, we went over the questions slowly to make sure that his answers were suitable for the questions. He wasn’t sure how to answer one question because it didn’t pertain to the story that he was telling so I told him that for the purpose of practicing the questions it was okay to make up an answer.

ONE POINT :We’d gone five minutes over by the time the routine was done but I still managed to work in the new one point so that he’d have something to work with for next class. So the next time I see him, he’ll probably have an interesting new sentence to finish off, “Even if…”, with.

Directions

Have you ever gotten lost, especially in another country, and needed to ask for directions in the native tongue but didn’t know how? A lot of students have this complaint when they travel abroad and need to get somewhere but don’t know how to go about asking for directions to get there. That’s why the directions lesson is such a life saver for students who wish to go on vacation or experience a home-stay in countries like America, Australia, or Canada – all countries which would require you to ask for directions in English.

Once the student has settled in, I show him the directions cards which include traffic signs and very important phrases. He needs to match up the phrases with the picture cards but expresses quite a bit of frustration over getting past the first handful of them. He’s unaccustomed to the phrases but is pretty comfortable with explaining them in Japanese. We take it slower and go over the cards together, one by one, until he is confident enough to match them up himself. Now he’s smiling and is eager to move onto the next step, which is moving onto the setup in the text that involves asking for and giving directions. Both acting as the person asking for directions as well as the one giving them prepares the student for two scenarios – one is understanding the directions that they are given later on, and the other is being able to give a foreigner in Japan a bit of assistance if they’re looking a bit on the lost side.

So, we take a look at a simple map that includes intersections, several streets, a post office, school, police station, bakery etc. We then take turns in asking and giving directions. First, I have him pick a location on the map and tell me where he is and then ask for directions to get to another location. He replies confidently with, “I’m at the post office, how do I get to the theater?” Very well done for someone who was worrying about doing well in the beginning of the lesson. I then proceed to give him directions to get to the theater and he follows me step by step by outlining the route with his finger on the map. When it comes to his turn to give directions, he’s a bit shaky at first but does a decent job in mapping out an easy route to get from A to B. But we’re aiming to make his directions perfect so I praise him on a job well done and then give him some suggestions on how he can make his directions clearer and more concise. He takes my suggestions in stride and, when it comes to his turn again, follows them to the letter by perfectly outlining how I can get across the map to my intended destination.

To end this lesson, I asked him a bonus question of how to get to the station from Smith’s School of English, Kyobashi. Once he got his bearings straight, that turned out to be a fun challenge for him that he handled very well.

Let's Talk - Ghosts

A good number of students have been asking me to explain the meaning of Halloween to them during the past couple of days, after having seen all the decorations up in the stores and getting curious. So, figuring that this was a good day to share some tales of spooks and goblins, I chose to use the Let’s Talk – Ghosts directed conversation as the item.

In this class I had two ladies and one gentleman. One of the ladies had been very eager to discuss Halloween and ghosts and the other had plenty of stories to share. The gentleman was also very happy to tell me of the unusual superstitions that surrounded his work environment. We first began by seeing who actually believed in ghosts. All three of them expressed a belief in ‘something’ that existed after death but nobody actually believed in ghost sightings or hauntings. I had them describe what they thought a typical Japanese ghost would look like and they went to great lengths to describe one. They then countered by asking me what I thought a ghost looked like so I gave them the stereotypical description of a transparent person dressed all in white, probably drifting down some hallway moaning and banging chains. They laughed at my imaginary ghost and then asked me if I had ever dressed up for Halloween. It was at this point that they began to muse over having their own Halloween party to experience the ghosty day for themselves.

Every now and then, as we went through the lesson, I would pause briefly to write down new vocabulary on the board or to cast some light on a few common grammar mistakes. One of the ladies had a bit of a habit of forgetting to insert verbs into her sentences so I first explained this to her and then gave her a gentle reminder when she forgot again. Afterwards, she halted in the middle of her sentence and forced herself to stick in a verb before moving on. When I told the students that the profession of parapsychology actually investigated and studied the existence of ghosts they were really amazed and excited to hear this. They also told me that the Buddhist monks did similar things but without the aid of science. That was very interesting to find out indeed.

When asked if they liked to watch ghost movies, all three of them replied positively and started to tell me of recent movies that they had watched. The lady that I regularly see on a Saturday stated that she really enjoys to watch ghost movies because they’re full of suspense and drama. She likes to be shocked and scared, especially in the middle of the night. The gentleman likes to watch ghost movies just for the special effects and to spend time with his friends. The other lady said that while she does have an interest in ghost movies and has watched several, she’s trying to cut back because she feels that the shock value is going to decrease her life span. A very amusing comment that wrapped up this item nicely.

Injuries 1

Having just recovered from a nasty cold, I was feeling in the mood to do Injuries 1 with my next student. The lesson covers everything from injuries to common ailments so it’s fun to go through right before the cold and flu season, right when people will need these useful words and phrases the most.

When my student walked in, I realized just how much she really needed this lesson at the moment. It turns out that she was also suffering from a cold and had many of the accompanying symptoms. Before we even got into the lesson I was writing up vocab on the board that covered a runny nose, headache, sinuses, and sore throat. She’d also been running a fever the day before so I added that to the list. We then moved into the item with the matching of the flash cards. Since we’d done a bit of a warm-up on the vocabulary, it didn’t take her very long to match everything up. Then we went through the individual cards, making sure that she understood the meanings and how to use them in a sentence. For example, while she could say, “I have a cold,” she didn’t know that it was grammatically incorrect to say, “I have a dizzy.” I explained to her that cold was a noun whereas dizzy was an adjective and proceeded to put both into one more example sentence. After understanding the differences between the sentences, she automatically caught onto the pattern for making sentences with the rest of the cards.

Once we’d basically drilled the cards in thoroughly, we moved onto the role-play. Here, we took turns playing the role of doctor and patient in order to give advice. All sorts of injuries and illnesses came up along the way and she found it challenging to give advice for such things as broken legs and hangovers. But she gave it her best shot and has a wonderful imagination so she managed to get through the role of doctor quite well. She did a great job of describing symptoms as well when I took on the part of playing the doctor and asked her to tell me how she felt unwell.

With the item mastered, she was well prepared to move onto the review of Routine 5 – The Japan Sea. For a review, I phrased the questions to her in the future tense so that she was forced to imagine an appointment that she might have the following week. This proved to be a bit difficult because she kept forgetting to add ‘will’ into her sentences to indicate the future but she eventually got up to speed and started to answer with perfect sentences.

Having only the one point remaining, I told her that I hope that my throat will feel better tomorrow because it was still feeling pretty sore at that point. Then I asked her what she hoped for. Her mind was on a similar wavelength so she replied by saying, “I hope that my cold sore goes away tomorrow.” I hope so too!

Post Intermediate - Restaurants 1

Probably one of the most useful lessons that students can benefit from when travelling to a foreign country is Restaurants 1 from the Post Intermediate level. Although one of my regular students at Smith’s School of English, Kyobashi has been abroad several times, he always seems to have difficulty ordering in a restaurant. The menus can be quite an obstacle to get through, especially when the student has no idea what an entrée or appetizer is.

So we started off the item by going through a variety of headings that a menu might list like main course, entrée, side orders, beverages etc. Basically, any word that he might not have been familiar with he was able to jot down into his notebook. After we got the menu all organized we went through a sample menu that was comprised of popular foods and drinks that he was bound to encounter in North America or Europe. Some of the food choices led him to ask questions about steak and kidney pie, sirloin steak, and lamb chops. He wanted to know exactly what part of the lamb the chops came from so I drew him a quick illustration to save looking up the Japanese word up in the dictionary. Now that all of the item choices were familiar to him it was time to start ordering.

We flipped over a page to practice the ordering dialogue that requires the student to order a complete meal from the menu, including desserts and drinks. He really got into this part of the lesson and made notes of the alternate ways that he could pick his desired dish. We switched roles twice so that he had the chance to play the part of both the customer and the waiter. After I was pretty sure that he was confident with the dialogue, I closed the book, leaving only the menu open. He had been expecting this part of the lesson and focused himself on remembering the lines from the dialogue. So we went through the dialogue two more times until he could naturally respond to the waiter’s prompts, changing the lines to suit the situation. To make it a bit more challenging, I threw in extra questions which required him to think of what kind of dressing he wanted on his salad and what kind of topics he preferred on his hamburger or pizza. He handled the bonus questions with very little problem except when it came to inquiring as to what toppings or dressings the restaurant had to offer. I gave him an example question where he could ask the waiter to list what kinds of choices were available.

By the end of the lesson, he had ordering in a restaurant pretty much mastered. He expressed his thanks and told me that he’d be testing those lines out the next time he traveled to the United States on a business trip. He’d grown so used to just pointing at pictures that he was looking forward to ordering something that he really wanted to eat.

News Events - Pet Cockroaches

Smith’s School of English, Kyobashi has a fair number of students that are very interested in the news and either read the newspaper, watch the news on TV, or keep up-to-date on everything in English on the Internet. It’s quite handy to keep a mental note of those students when I’m skimming through their files, trying to choose their next lesson. A lot of these students really like to tackle the articles from the News Event section of the curriculum. One of the articles that has been known to produce a pretty emotional response in students is the one that revolves around pet cockroaches.

My last student the other night is usually so talkative and eager to openly express his opinions on just about anything or fish around for some of mine that I thought the pet cockroaches article would be perfect for sparking up some great conversation. Once we’d gotten through some casual banter and reviewed the one point from the previous lesson, I handed him his copy of the article. Wow! That was his initial reaction at seeing the article title as well as the photo of the massive cockroach in full color. I jokingly asked him if he’d already eaten dinner and if it was okay to proceed with the slightly squeamish topic. He reassured me that although he isn’t a big fan of cockroaches he was really intrigued to figure out why anyone would want to keep one as a pet.

First of all, I had him read the article aloud since it works well to improve the student’s confidence at speaking in English without worrying too much about making mistakes. We paused here and there to correct some pronunciation errors and smooth out his intonations. He repeated some of the words three or four times to himself to drill it in before moving on. After he’d gone through the article the first time, we went through it a second time to take a look at some of the new vocabulary. Next came the comprehension check which took the form of questions relating to the article. I asked him the accompanying questions for the article and he answered most of them with only the occasional glance at the article to see if he remembered accurately. So far, so good! We then began to discuss cockroaches in general and what he thought of them. He went out of his way to keep his room clean to keep the cockroaches out and shared my fear of the flying menaces during the summer. Apparently, cockroaches would never become a pet choice for him regardless of how little space he had in his apartment. We shared a few cockroach tales where we’d perhaps overreacted to their presence and kind of did some anti-insect bonding over them.

At this point, we didn’t have much time left because he’d had too much fun with the item so we reviewed a handful of questions from Routine 1 and then moved onto the new one point. Having successfully done that, off he went to eat dinner and put those pesky roaches out of his mind.

Let's Talk - Outer Space

Yesterday really was a great day at Smith’s School of English, Kyobashi. One of the students had brought in some delicious homemade muffins – just enough for all the teachers and staff to have one or two – and was very eager to start her lesson. Her English skills have improved immensely over the last year and she’d recently been leveled up so she was very keen on challenging herself in her new level.

Since she absolutely loves to chat and is very free with her imagination, I selected a topic from the Let’s Talk folder that I figured she’d probably take an interest in. I wasn’t to be disappointed because she dove right into the conversation as soon as she realized what it was that we’d be talking about. The topic in question was outer space and one of the first guided conversation questions asks if the student believes in the existence of life out there. She was very quick to respond with, “Oh yes, I believe there are aliens living in outer space.” When nudged for a bit of insight into the type of alien she had in mind, she was quick to tell me that these aliens look nearly identical to us humans and live on a nearby undetected planet. What have these aliens been up to recently? Apparently, they’ve been studying the people of Earth in the hopes of being able to contact us in the future.

After receiving so much creative detail about her aliens, their appearance and ultimate goal, I was very pleased to see that she was proving her level-up to be well deserved. There were a few points where we took a bit of a break off of the aliens to go over a few grammar mistakes or choose a more appropriate word to fit into the context of the sentences that she had used. Other than that, her energy and fascination with the potential that contact with aliens had kept the conversation going at such a speed that neither of us noticed that we had just run out of classroom time.

I made sure to give her a new one point before she left so that we’d be able to review it next time. However, after the one point she had a special request to make. She’d been practicing her English at home by writing a diary everyday – a wonderful idea for using the English grammar and vocabulary that she had learned so far, as well as expressions. She only had 2 pages for checking so I went through them and carefully marked up the grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes, telling her why they were wrong and how to fix them as I went along. She left the lesson supercharged for learning more English and writing a new entry in her diary.

Possessives 2

Tonight, one of my classes began on a one-point that was excitedly blurted out in the lounge by a student that I hadn’t seen in a while. “Long time no see!” She exclaimed as I was on the verge of offering her a drink. Her friend quickly echoed the sentiment and was very pleased that I hadn’t forgotten them or their names.

We started off the lesson reminiscing over the last time we’d met, which was three months ago (the first lady informed me because she’d been keeping track of the time), and the stories that we’d exchanged at the time. These two women always attend classes together because they’ve been best friends from high school so I can remember both them and their unique tales quite well. Seeing as how they regularly come on a Monday I’m not able to see them unless they take a make-up lesson on an alternative day. Today was such an occasion.

After a healthy amount of chatter, we moved onto the item that would take up most of the lesson time. I chose to do [Possessives 2] and focus on the flash cards that were broken up into two parts – describing the relationship from one family member to the next, and listing actual family member titles. So the first task would be to match up the cards. They worked exceptionally well as a team, helping each other get through the easier ones like “Your Mother’s Daughter” = “Sister”. When it came to the more difficult ones, drawing a family tree showing the relationship to the unknown relative made things a lot clearer for them.

Once all of the cards had been matched up, I double checked to make sure that everything was clear and that they had taken down good notes on the matchups. We had to clarify that nephew and niece could be either your brother or sister’s children before moving on to the role play. All of the students really enjoy this part because they can ask and answer questions about their family as well as their partner’s. This also helps to fortify the family member titles in the students’ heads because they are now identifying them with actual people that they know. This part of the lesson was definitely the liveliest with one friend trying desperately to remember what her aunt’s name was and what kind of hobbies she had.

Having ample time remaining after finishing up with the item, we did some practice with the questions from Routine 1. This past Tuesday had been a national holiday and a day off for both of them so we took turns asking about that day using the past tense. The first lady told me that she’d been window shopping on Tuesday and agreed with me that the crowds had been comparable to a Sunday afternoon – meaning, very crowded indeed. When her friend was called upon to share what she’d been up to on Tuesday, she looked at us rather sheepishly and admitted that she’d stayed home watching TV all day. So long as it was relaxing, it was a day well spent.

The one point was pretty much open to the imagination, “I believe~.” I gave them several examples of what I believe, jokingly telling them that, “I believe in Santa Claus.” They took it from there, making up several examples that were excellent after a bit of grammatical tweaking. At the end of the lesson, they promised me that they’d take another of my lessons very soon and left quite cheerfully.

Vocabulary #2

The two high level students that I had for this last class at Smith's School of English Kyobashi were very tired because they had just finished work. One of them had just come from a meeting so I let them slowly warm up to the lesson, giving them a bit of time to get into the one point. The first lady was very anxious to get through the one point because she had memorized it while the her classmate was a bit reluctant to pull out her notebook. But we eventually got through the one point and moved onto the item.

We were doing vocabulary unit 2 today and this kind of perked the students up because they like building their vocabulary. Most of the words were new to them so we spent a fair amount of time in introducing the vocabulary before actually moving onto example sentences. They both did very well at using the new vocabulary once they had gotten a firm grasp on the proper usages. Along the way, we had a bit of a discussion on how safe Japan was in comparison to other countries because we'd gotten to the word 'seedy' and the students had a bit of difficulty relating to the word. But after a bit of talking amongst themselves, they came to the agreement that Osaka did indeed have seedy areas but very few.

After the vocabulary, we reviewed routine 7 by asking and answering the questions. We adjusted a few of them according to the answers that the students gave to make sure that the flow of the questioning made sense.

At the end, we wrapped things up with a new one point: "I want (a) to (b) because (c)" and they took turns providing their own examples. The first student said, "I want the teacher to bake me some muffins because they sound delicious." I'd told her about my muffin success earlier on and I guess that this had stirred up her appetite for trying some of them. The second student said,
"I want my dog to remain healthy because I love him."

Pet Cockroaches anyone?

This news article gives me a mixture of good and bad feelings. It's mainly good because the students just love to discuss cockroaches, especially as terrors of their apartments and houses. The bad part is the creepy photograph of a gigantic cockroach in full color. I'm just not a big fan of these insects.

So, we were going through the article with mixed reactions from the students. On the one hand, one of the men looked fascinated with the topic. On the other, his classmate looked like she was losing her appetite for dinner. But despite their rather extreme reactions to the subject matter, they still managed to get quite a lot out of this lesson. After they had taken turns reading the article, we went through the new vocabulary. There were a handful of new words to be explained and after this was done, we moved onto the questions. This took a bit of time because the students had to look back through the article to find the answers, and occasionally rephrase things. Overall, they did a good job of thoroughly answering the questions with the appropriate answers.

At the end, we discussed the pros and cons of having these gigantic cockroaches as pets. The female student insisted that regardless of how the article had hyped these insects, she would never consider keeping one as a pet. She stood by her feelings of how cockroaches were dirty and creepy and gave her the shivers just to think of them. Her classmate was quick to jump at the opportunity to keep this type of cockroach as a pet, saying that it would be a fun experiment for him. He was interested to see what the differences were between regular cockroaches and gigantic ones.

At Smith's School of English Kyobashi, having such interesting articles like this one is great because it sparks conversations and encourages the students to have their own opinions.

Customs

Since many students travel abroad I find this Smith's School of English lesson very beneficial. Last week I had a lesson with 1 green and 1 red level student. After reviewing the one point "You shouldn't have" from their lesson last week I asked if either of them had visited any foreign countrys in their lives. 1 student had been to a few countrys but I was surprised when the other replyed that he had never been to any country outside of Japan.

This was a good time to pause and review the routine 9 Finnegan's Bar story. Each student had already completed this routine once just last week so the story's content was fresh in their minds. They didn't have too much trouble with the question and answer session. They were a little confused however with the "That should do the trick" expression. But after a little explanation they quickly had no trouble grasping the meaning.

I introduced the customs curriculum to the students by showing them the copy of the customs declaration form. The 1 student who had traveled to a few countrys had already seen it and in fact had filled it out before. Not surprisingly this form was brand new to the other student but his green level was quite high so he had little trouble deciphering its contents. I then introduced some common questions asked at airports these days including the most important one "Do you have anything to declare?" . With very little delay I had the students begin role playing the passenger/customs officer. As always the picture cards in this lesson are great to present real life travel situations. I was happy to see each student forming very creative questions to ask each other like "Why do you have a ______ in your bag?" , "Where did you buy it?" , "Do you always travel with a _______?" or "How much is it worth?"

The students role of the customs officer finished off well as they responded to the rest of the picture cards accurately during the cool off stage. They seemed to really enjoy themselves and comprehend the significance of this important part of traveling. I gave them today's C28 one point "I don't mind________" to round off this successful lesson.

Comparisons 2 - "Brad Pitt is not as handsome as Tom Cruise"

Today at Smith's School of English Kyobashi, the two gentlemen who walked into my lesson were both looking forward to the lesson and seeing each other again. They had established a kind of rapport in the previous lesson, having discovered that they had quite a few things in common. So, they were eager to take a lesson together and have a bit of fun while learning.

The item for this lesson was Comparisons 2. I threw some questions at them as a warm up, asking them who the most beautiful actress was. They both had their individual opinions on that, as well as who the richest person in the world was. From there, I wrote up some questions on the board where they had to form comparisons. For example; Tom Cruise is not as (tall) as Brad Pitt. They practically flew through this stage because they were having a bit of friendly competition. One would answer pretty quickly, and the other would shoot off an answer just as fast, not to be outdone.

We took the comparisons to a new level by introducing some opinionated comparison statements and having them take turns agreeing or disagreeing. This became a bit tricky because the disagreeing meant having to change the structure of the original sentence. One particularly difficult sentence brought the lesson to a dead stop. "Brad Pitt is not as handsome as Tom Cruise." The first student was very adamant on insisting that neither Brad Pitt nor Tom Cruise were handsome and therefore would neither agree nor disagree. After a bit of coaxing, I assured him that for the benefit of the lesson it was okay to make up an answer. He was a bit reluctant at first but finally replied with, "I disagree. Brad Pitt is as handsome as Tom Cruise." Problem solved.

In the last few minutes of the item, the students were given the opportunity to make up whatever types of comparisons they wanted with cats and dogs, trains and planes etc. They had a lot of fun with this part and the agreeing and disagreeing part.

Afterwards, we did a review of Routine 6 and followed it up with a new one point: When I was young, I could never (a) but now I (b) because (c).

Transportation 1

What's one of the first things you do once you get through the immigration upon arriving at a new place? To get a ride away from the airport! While there might be someone picking you up for the lucky few, most of us have to make our own way around. Transportation 1 in the Smith's School of English curriculum is a great lesson to get you started!

Q & A Routines

The Question and Answer routines involve asking questions in order to get a specific answer. There are ten questions in particular that are useful for eliciting most of the answers in this routine, and they can, and should, be learnt independently of the routines. Since the subject material is set, students may find themselves trying to express ideas they normally would not, or are not yet comfortable with. The benefit in having set answers for these questions is that students can gain confidence responding in a test environment, and then later expand or combine these simple answers into longer, more natural phrases. This process is at the core of English Coaching philosphy at Smith's School of English.

immigration

Since many students study English for traveling I always enjoy doing this lesson. Immigration questions at airports were scarce and rarely asked a few years ago. But now airport security at international airports has been enhanced to its highest level ever. So has the importance and benefit of this Smith's School of English lesson.

Passive Voice

"Wagahai wa neko de aru is a famous book written by Souseki Natsume", "This new video game was developed by Nintendo." Passive voice is used frequently in our daily conversations and it comes in handy when you are trying to introduce new things to non-locals. This lesson plan not only teaches students when and how passive voice is used, but also focuses on the application of this particular grammar point by offering picture-based dialogues, sentence-completing practices and real life conversation topics.

News Events

Smith's School of English has a selection of revised news articles covering various topics ranging from crop circles to drug smuggling. It is a lesson planned for high level students, offering new vocabulary, new sentence patterns, as well as some interesting questions out of context which often spark heated discussions in class.

Predicting the Future

This Smith's School of English lesson isn't so much about asking whether you will get married and have eight children, but involves predicting what you will do next summer, next Sunday, or tomorrow. One of the main focuses of this lesson is the certainty of the prediction. This lesson lets students use a variety of vocabulary in expressing future activities, such as "I know that I will ____", "I guess that I will___". The practice dialogue gives the student a direction in which to practice this vocabulary with the picture cards. Developing the main ideas allows the student to ask more open-ended questions with the possibility of WH questions related to that topic.

Ability 2

This Smith's School of English lesson focuses on invitations. The student learns how to ask invitations as well as accepting or declining them. Then if they accept an invitation they learn how to ask follow up questions to find out more about the activity. Even though this is an intermediate lesson I find it very useful for beginner students because the format is easy to follow and understand. Many Japanese students study English to communicate with foreigners. So this lesson provides a valuable resource for them.

past 3

This Smith's School of English lesson focuses on the past particle grammar usage which ultimately leads to the very popular "Have you ever_________in your life" question. I always try to incorporate a mini lesson for past participle review especially for lower level students. This means I write some verb examples the board like eat/ate/eaten or see/saw/seen. I find this sets a good example so the students can easily identify the grammar point in this lesson.

Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are very important if you want to get by in the normal English-speaking environment. Most English speakers use phrasal verbs very casually on a daily basis without thinking about it, so understanding and being able to use them is crucial for becoming an integral participant in an English conversation. Memorizing regular verbs isn't enough to get by in a country where English is the first language of the natives so these phrasal verb lessons are incredibly useful for preparing students for trips overseas or home stays. The Smith's School of English lesson introduces a number of phrasal verbs, some especially related to cooking. It includes exercises that range a great deal in situation and dialogue, so that the student gets a wide variety of practice using phrasal verbs.

Gerunds and Infinitives

Gerunds and infinitives are very useful, but are tricky for remembering how to use them correctly. They are especially great when you want to share your bad habits or tell others what you do or don't like to do. This Smith’s School of English lesson makes the differentiation between gerunds and infinitives concrete so as to smooth over repetitive grammar errors and guide students in their proper usage.

Un/countable

Two slices of cheese or two cheeses? A countable noun is one that has both a singular and plural usage, such as one tomato, two tomatoes. All abstract nouns are uncountable, but when it comes to material nouns it gets a little trickier. This Smith’s School of English lesson focuses on distinguishing some of the countable uncountable nouns, especially when it comes to food items. It gets students identifying whether the noun needs to be talked about in terms of 'how many' or 'how much'. Some nouns can be both uncountable and countable, such as cake which is either a mass noun in 'two pieces of cake', and a countable noun when there are 'two whole cakes'. This lesson also introduces the student to some of the most common containers and quantity expressions for uncountable nouns, like a piece of cheese, a glass of wine, a box of tea, and so on. In the development section the student has an opportunity to practice distinguishing countable and uncountable nouns with some expansion questions.

Idioms

Target lessons on idioms are an important part of the curriculum for high level students. Idioms are phrases whose meaning cannot be deduced from the some of its parts, such as "Achilles' heel" or "safe as houses". A knowledge of idiomatic expressions shows a great deal of fluency, so to this end the focus of these Smith’s School of English idiom lessons isn't only to understand the idioms, but for the students to become comfortable using them, and be able to apply them naturally when talking about day to day situations.

Frequency

How often do you go shopping? Or, do you ever eat cake for breakfast?

When talking about regular daily events it’s important to have some vocabulary related to frequency. People ALWAYS use frequency terms when discussing their life. For example, when talking about someone’s recent weekend activity, you’d be tempted to ask how often they go camping. Whether they go camping almost every weekend, or whether it is really rare for them to be able to take a break changes the impact of the event. Frequency lessons at Smith’s School of English focus on this specific set of vocabulary words and their application.

Imperatives

How would you warn someone of a dangerous situation? Would you recognize such a warning if you heard it yourself?

This Smith’s School of English lesson is designed to help prevent and avoid potentially dangerous situations. If you ever hear someone shout, "Watch out for the bus!", you'll know exactly what you are being warned of and know how to react in advance. And as an added bonus, you will know how to explain warning signs to help others avert disaster.

Adjectives

What would you do if you lost something and needed help in finding it?

Well, the first thing you would probably be required to do is describe that lost something. This can be a mighty challenging task if you aren't familiar with descriptive words and don't know where to begin. That's where the Smith’s School of English Adjectives lessons come in handy. Whether it be a lost purse or dropped cell phone, these lessons will help you describe your belongings should you ever misplace them. Adjectives are equally beneficial for describing foods and objects that your new friend may never have seen nor tried before.

Directions

Excuse me, how do I get to...... ?

Whether you are lost in a foreign land yourself or someone who is foreign to your land is lost in your neighborhood, being able to explain how to get from point A to point B is a life saver. This Smith’s School of English lesson is enjoyable and offers a great deal of new vocabulary. Once the vocabulary is practiced to the point of comfortability the student has a chance to role play using various maps and classroom tools. By the time this lesson is mastered getting and giving directions in English isn't so intimidating anymore!

Now the only problem is actually knowing where you are going in the first place..

Phrase Cards

Phrase cards are organized sets of flash cards with set English phrases.

What better way to help students familiarize themselves with set English phrases than with some well organized phrase cards? These Smith’s School of English cards are a great way to provide students with example usages while encouraging them to use the chosen phrases freely without assistance. There are literally hundreds of these phrase cards on hand so the options are potentially limitless.

If...Will

This is a really fun and creative Smith’s School of English item where the students are encouraged to work with 'what if' scenarios. Part of this section provides students with questions that spark their imagination into coming up with what kind of path they would choose if they win the lottery, take a vacation in Hawaii, or meet a celebrity.

L & R Routines

Regardless of the language, in daily life we ask and are required to answer many straightforward and sometimes challenging questions. The Smith’s School of English Routines were created in order to address this need for the would-be English speaker. By introducing, drilling, and reviewing these questions both inside and outside of a structured lesson we are preparing the students for realistic conversations in the real-life world.

Let's Talk!

Open ended conversation with topic specific discussion questions. You never can tell which question will spark interest for the student. Smith’s School of English Let's talk discussion items give coaches a great opportunity to identify a student's weak point and support them in an open ended natural conversation environment.

Injuries

Ouch!

No one enjoys getting sick or going to the hospital but what's worse is having to do so in a foreign land using a foreign language. Smith’s School of English has some lessons designed specifically for this type of situation dealing with everything from describing minor symptoms to paying the doctors bill afterwards. Discuss how you used these lessons here.

-Gavin

ING/ED

Here's another doosey! Slight grammatical differences when conjugating can be frustrating for someone studying English. Smith’s School of English aim to practice the different usages in natural conversational setting so our students won't be so frustrated. Hey! That's a pretty good example right there.

Let's use this space to discuss lessons dealing with this useful grammar point!

-Gavin