Reflections on the past school year

Well my first ALT at a High School has finally drawn to a close. The worst part of my experience was the long commute(about 90-100 minutes) and very few other things were bad and since my name is on this blog I do not want to be specific about it :).

But overall I enjoyed my experience at the HS and it was the easiest public school job I have had. The class sizes were broken up into A and B so I had no more than 20 students per class. I taught about 8 lessons a week over 4 days and would teach the same lesson cycle for 2-3 weeks. Over the year I taught 12 classes.

I have always had good experiences in the past with team teaching because I was flexible but this experience it became a different level. I was left to plan the lessons as I saw best but I would mostly base it on the textbook(something that the teachers and I discussed). If the lesson included a lesson theme about giving directions then I would develop games or activities to expand what the textbook had and try to make it interesting, useful, or fun. Doing all 3 at the same time was a challenge but I had plenty of prep time to make materials and research games and I hope I was successful.

I tried a variety of activities so that different personalities could enjoy. Some students like games, and others like conversation, etc. I tried to keep it balanced and the best compliment for my lessons was the school put them on the test. This also helped teaching since the material was on the test and not in the textbook. My class became that much more important.

I would recommend anyone working at an Eikaiwa to get into teaching at a public school right away. The hours and job content are more satisfying. Of course there are drawbacks but I think I will leave that to another post. I hope to work at the same high school from May if all can be worked out. My schedule is quite hectic.

My First Passport Book Review

What would be English teaching without great textbooks to guide you and your students through? Here is my first review and it is a book I have used in 3 different settings; a juku, my English school in Nishinomiya http://www.fesjapan.com/ , and at the high school where I work during the very few ESS(English Speaking Society) meetings.


First a brief intro of the book. The book follows the adventures of Japanese students on a home stay, a school trip, and Japanese students who have English-speaking students do a student exchange at their school. A very nice variety of situations. For more information please visit the oxford site ... http://www.oupjapan.co.jp/. There is also a workbook to use with the series.

The basic layout of the book is quite easy to understand. It starts with an introduction of the characters that will appear in the book. I can often turn these 2 pages into a lesson by reading the passage to the students, asking them read it, and after I check their understanding(I ask them if they have any questions) I ask them questions about the paragraph for Q and A practice as a double check of comprehension.

The next section is a "Where are you from" which takes some information from the introduction and asks where they are from. There are a few more questions for students and this lesson has a workbook page for review. I find this is a good tie-in to the introduction for the 2nd lesson as usually the 1st unit in the book is very easy and takes little time.

Now we get the to the meat of the book which are the lessons itself. They all start with a picture speculation (always good) to get the students thinking of the situation. Then the first listening which is nothing more than checking whether the words from the word list are spoken on the CD. I found for low-level adult students I would skip this part and just have them repeat the words as I do with everyone. The next is the listening section part 2 which can be anything from multiple choice, True/False, or open-ended questions(which I prefer). For higher students I often ask them more information, especially for the T/F which can be quite easy. After all, the students have a 50/50 chance even if they have no idea what was said. Both these parts use the same conversation so for low students, they have 2 chances to hear the conversations.

The next part of the lesson is the key words and phrases section which I really appreciate, as I do in any book. It shows the students exactly what language is used and what they will use themselves later in the lesson.

Next is the conversation which has 2 parts. The first part is a listening where students must fill in the blanks, and after that is complete the book has 2-3 new substitution words which can be used to make a new conversation but based on the model, i.e. "I am going to the bank." but the new conversation might change bank to shopping mall.

The last part of the lesson is the activity which is an information gap between students. Each student A and B have different pages with different information. The workbook usually reinforces the vocab and structures used which can be used at the end of class if there is time, or done as homework.

And that concludes each individual unit. Every 3 units there is a review which I often skip unless the students really struggled with the lessons. Also at the end of the book are culture files which explain a culture difference between the West and Japan which were great for ESS meetings. They correspond to the topics of each unit. For Adult students I do not use or let them read for homework. And at the very end of the book there is a English word list that has Japanese which is great for lower students although I admit I try not to use it if possible.

So that is the book format. Let me give a summary of the good and bad points.

Good points.

1. It is colorful. Easy to understand pictures.
2. Well-rounded. Listening practice, vocab, structured conversation, free talk.
3. Easy to understand structure makes it ideal for lower students.
4. Very reasonable price for the textbook, workbook, and classroom CD.
5. A lot of useful situations: introductions, shopping, sightseeing tours, etc.
6. Related to Japan and Japanese learners.
7. Almost no preparation time is required. Good for busy teachers.
8. More resources are available on the web such as tests and more review.

Bad Points:

1. The Conversation listening practice where students fill in the blanks is often too long so students can listen and understand, but do not have enough time to write so they forget the answer.
2. The difficulty of the lessons often varies considerably but this due in part that they chose useful situations so this point is forgivable to a degree.
3. No Japanese instructions, also a minor point.

I hope to review other books in the passport series at a later date including the new my first passport 2. I will start to use this book in the coming weeks.

Overall rating for this book: 8/10 I highly recommend for beginners and young learners.

Different uses of “like”

This one topic from a few lessons I have taught recently and students who confuse the different uses of "like" which lower students often assume is 好き.

The first use that they have encountered is indeed using 好き "Do you like dogs?". But 2 other uses have come up in the textbook so I will write more about them.

The next use is the meaning どのように　or どのような　as in "What is the weather like?" which students confuse with どんな天気が好き？　That same lesson also teaches "How is the weather?" which is far more easier for students to understand as 天気はどうですか？

The other use that popped up yesterday was "Would you like a bag?" Which they confused for カバン好き？　instead of the polite form of "Do you want a bag?". The situation was a shopping lesson and the customer just bought a pair of sunglasses and was asked by the clerk "Would you like bag?".

I always teach my students that for listening, often key words are very important but in the above cases they only heard too few key words and mistook the meaning.

I know this is two grammar posts in a row and so I apologize. I knwo for most grammar is very boring btu from my engineering background, I am fascinated with the structure, especially the differences between the two languages.

Present Progressive for future

This is a post I hope my grammar god friend will look at and comment. Today I was doing a lesson in one of my many many books at my school in Nishinomiya. The lesson topic was "What are you doing tomorrow?". Now when I worked at Nova and ECC their textbooks always taught going to .... for future. ECC also had a lesson where they had both and explained the difference (wish I had that explanation). In my view , using the present progressive makes the statement more concrete. "I am playing tennis tomorrow." would be 明日間違いなくテニスをするつもりです。" and then "I am going to play tennis tomorrow" would be ”明日テニスをするつもりです” but I am not sure. I always recommend students use going to as the present progressive does not always seem to work as in I am watching T.V. later tonight. Sometimes being in Japan so long and thinking too much about the grammar can drive a person crazy. Anybody got an opinion I would love to hear it on this one. I wait for the experts to reply.