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Download Songs for ESL Children

April 5th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

Once a week, I throw my Pooh bag over my shoulder and haul my collection of flash cards and toys to my local kindergarten. With a fresh bunch of children starting their English lessons in a couple of weeks, I’ve taken to revamping the curriculum I’ve been using, and injecting some energy into it [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 4 Comments »

Arnold Schwarzenegger Calls AEON English School

March 14th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

While I’ve been (and still am) waiting for my websites to move to their new web host, I’ve had some time to catch up on my favorite podcasts. One of those podcasts is from Gaijin-in-Japan.com, and recently in Mike’s 82nd podcast, we got treated to this brilliant prank call to an AEON English school in [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 3 Comments »

Don’t Forget Your Pencil!

October 25th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

Time for a quick rant about my job as an English teacher in Japan. Before continuing, please read my disclaimer.
This post is about children who forget to bring a pencil to class. Do I even need to say more? Surely that’s like going swimming without you’re trunks! If you’re going to school, take a pencil. It really shouldn’t [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 2 Comments »

Teach English Online

October 20th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I’ve been teaching English in Japan for over ten years, but I haven’t ventured into online English teaching. However, the internet is now part of our everyday lives, and email is no longer the only common means of communication. People everywhere, young and old, are using webcams, headsets, and software such as Skype to communicate with friends and [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 5 Comments »

Disney English System for Japanese

June 11th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I just learned from my wife that she has sent off a request for a free Disney English System sample DVD. It’s widely accepted that if you want your child to be proficient in a foreign language, then you should start their learning from a young age.
The last decade has seen Japan’s “English conversation” schools [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 2 Comments »

Don’t talk in English!

March 2nd, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

When I first came to Japan in 1997, the big chain school I worked at recommended all its teachers to open a bank account at Tokai Bank because of its proximity to the head office and the fact that the ATMs had English guidance. Soon after though, Tokai merged with Sanwa Bank and all the [...]

Posted in Japan | 1 Comment »

Think you can teach Japanese kindy?

January 19th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I’ve been teaching at Japanese kindergartens for years now, and I always have a lot of fun. The key to success in teaching these classes is to be fun and energetic. While some “proper” teachers complain that they came to Japan to “teach”, and not dance around like clowns, I believe that if your style [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | No Comments »

Laughing at the guy who can’t speak English.

January 14th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I had intended to write about something completely different but I came across this video which I just had to post here. It’s a Japanese game show in which if you laugh, you get the cane. What do they laugh at? Well, although they try their best to keep quiet, it’s hard not to crack [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | No Comments »

Spare me my life!

November 27th, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

I was just looking around at the Japanese videos on youtube.com, and came across the following ‘English lesson’. I know we talk about using role-play to teach English, and how chants are a good way to remember phrases, but come on! This is just silly! I must confess that I’ve never seen anything quite like [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | No Comments »

English lessons on Japanese trains

November 22nd, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

Imagine you have to commute home every night by train. The train is packed so you can’t sit down and you’ve already read the day’s newspaper. You forgot to bring a book and the batteries are dead in your walkman. It’s dark outside so you can’t stare out the windows and you’ve read the same [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | No Comments »

My gullible students!

October 24th, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

Yesterday was our Halloween barbeque, which was a lot of fun. One activity we did was set up boxes with pictures of fingers, brains, worms and eyeballs on them. Inside were sausages, prunes, noodles and peeled grapes, and the kids were really quick to figure that out. The adults tend to have a better imagination [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | No Comments »

Is ESL in Japan a big joke?

October 3rd, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

According to an NHK report in 2000, Japan has the largest commercial English language education market in the world, valued at $20 billion. So, you would expect most Japanese to be fairly proficient in English, right? Wrong! Official TOEIC figures for 1997-1998 showed Japan to have the lowest average score among the 17 countries in which TOEIC test taking is [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 8 Comments »

My house is a Daiwa house

September 27th, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

There’s a TV commercial in Japan by a house-building company called ‘Daiwa House’ in which an English teacher is reading sentences for his class of high school students to repeat. I can’t remember exactly but he says something like “My father is a doctor”, and all the students diligently repeat him. Then, following the same [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | No Comments »

Computer Translation

September 23rd, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

One of my students wanted to write an English translation  of an interview she found in a magazine, and not an easy one at that. Her final translation came to seven pages, and she asked me to check it. “Sure, no problem, let me have a look” I agreed.
Although this student’s English level is pretty high, [...]

Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »