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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 »

Get ESL Tips from Chris’ English School

January 16th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

One of the more recent blogs I’ve subscribed to is that of ESL teacher, Chris Ballard. Born in Hawaii, but now residing in Yanai city in Yamaguchi, Chris runs his own English school out of his own home.
Another disgruntled English teacher? NO!
What makes this blog so unique is that instead of criticising the ESL [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 2 Comments »

What will Rikuto Be?

September 20th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I was teaching the future tense using “will” to three Junior High school students today, and since we had some time left at the end of the lesson, I showed them a picture of Rikuto and asked them to write answers to four questions about his future.
Here they are for your own amusement!
1. What [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 3 Comments »

Business English for Professionals

September 20th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

Since coming to Japan, I’ve worked in almost every English teaching situation you can imagine. I’ve worked in English Conversation chain schools, I’ve been an ALT in Junior high schools, taught at kindergartens and elementary schools. I’ve done “baby” classes, private lessons in coffee shops, English by email, and even dabbled in video conferencing. The [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 2 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 »

Double without you

May 13th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

One of the biggest difficulties in teaching English to adults in Japan is you are constantly battling against what they have previously learned. Most Japanese have studied English in some capacity for at least six years, most of which, if not all, were at the hands of a Japanese English teacher, and in some cases [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 10 Comments »

Politically correct ESL

March 17th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I used to use some old textbooks called Jack and Jill, in which the words ‘ugly’ and ‘pretty’ were represented by pictures of an ugly girl and a pretty girl. Jack and Jill was published back in the ’70s, but not much has changed in the book I’m using now, Hip Hip Hooray, in which [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 6 Comments »

Walk the dinosaur

February 26th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

When I was a kid, thirteen to be exact, Was (Not Was) released a song called ‘Walk the Dinosaur’, which was a huge hit in 1988. It’s one of those songs you don’t forget, and I tend to sing it to myself every time one of my elementary school students chooses the ‘dinosaur’ from a [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 2 Comments »

Kancho - A Japanese pastime

February 6th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

“Kancho is the ancient art of clasping your hands together, and playfully poking your friend or enemy,…in the rear. It is also called “The Friendly Enema”, and is practiced by children in schoolyards and classrooms around the world. Kancho.org is dedicated to spreading the good news about Kancho.” Source: www.kancho.org
When Japanese kids first started shoving [...]

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 »

Back to School: Rule Reminders

January 4th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

Since I’m back to school tomorrow, I’ve been thinking again about my ESL lessons, and remembered an interesting moment from last term. I was getting frustrated with one of my kindergarten classes so right at the start of the lesson I told the children that if they crawl under the tables they will lose all [...]

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 »

Bonding with my ESL Kids

November 24th, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve broken the golden rule of teaching English to children by speaking Japanese! Heaven help me! I’ve started each lesson with a few minutes of chit-chat with the kids and I’m really enjoying it!
I just ask them what they’ve been doing lately and they are really forthcoming in [...]

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 »

ESL-Kids.com update

November 20th, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

Earlier this year I started on ESL-Kids.com, a website that offers printable flashcards and worksheets for teachers like me - ESL teachers on the front lines everyday, faced with an army of children and only a few ABC cards to defend ourselves with.
It was a slow start, but recently I’ve given ESL Kids a facelift, [...]

Posted in Technology | 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 »

A massage from your teacher

October 7th, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

I was looking through some of my old things and found a postcard from the first school I taught at in Japan. When a potential customer had taken a trial lesson, the teacher was supposed to fill in this postcard and it would be sent to that student. I had to shrink the picture a [...]

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 »