Archive for October, 2007

Although Nova (not long ago the dominant presence in conversation schools in Japan) might still manage to save itself, I can imagine there are many teachers who are now wishing they were no longer working or had never worked for Nova- those who haven’t been paid since September, those who have received eviction notices at the accomodation that Nova had already taken the rent out of their wages for (and some, not knowing the illegality of those notices, moved out and made themselves homeless), those who proudly told their families they were off to Japan to see the world and pay off their debts and then had to ask Ma and Pa to wire money so they could fly home with less money than when they started, etc. etc.  Nobody’s going to be making the mistake of coming out to Nova again for a long time, but Nova is not the first language school in Japan nor the first language school market leader in the world to go down the drain, and it won’t be the last. Here’s how not to fall down the next hidden rabbit hole: (more…)

Have got plenty of new worksheets up at Usingenglish.com  , have added a whole bunch of TEFLtasticly multimedia song worksheets for teaching and practising grammar to my video worksheets (more to come of both of these), and have been rearranging the mini reviews on the reviews page so that they are a little easier to find. Have also somehow found time to teach my classes, in fact sometimes it’s a nice break to get away from the computer screen and into class! That is, until I think of another nice worksheet I could type up for the next class…

Not only is the pink bunny waving its (his?) sad goodbye, but Mark and Mary Devlin have decided to sell Metropolis. So that’s two mainstays of gaijinhood gone in just two weeks. Coincidence? (more…)

Anyone who has been following the death throes of the pink bunny surely know by now that Nova has gone belly up, but I think I will be ahead of everyone else with this news report:

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Why did Japanese women blacken their teeth and why did they stop doing it?

Showing your white teeth was thought to be like showing the white of your bones. The blackening liquid was also thought to preserve the teeth. The practice was outlawed in the Meiji era in order to not offend foreign visitors.

If you want anything else Nipponese explained, it might already be on the Japan Explained blog.

For those who those of you in the “never heard of the Titanic until it sunk” situation with Nova, it is the largest and most marketing friendly of language school chains in Japan- the MacDonalds of Japanese language schools. To see what happened to the MacDonalds of Spanish language schools and the whole industry there, click here. For those of you too lazy to sign onto Google news alerts for yourself but still want the latest on Nova, see below: (more…)

More Japanese expressions, provided more for your interest than your edification, which is my excuse for including dated slang and the like… 

War of the Sexes Japanese Style 

Japanese- Sodai gomi

Literal meaning- Giant rubbish

Real meaning- Slang for a retired husband who has just become a waste of space

Japanese- Nanpa suru

Literal meaning- To do the soft one (more…)

As I mentioned below, am planning on getting all the video worksheets I have written over the years up on the Worksheets part of the blog. All the first bunch I put up a few days ago use a nice little technique I either created or borrow (can’t remember which now) for pre-teaching vocab and making sure the students notice how it is being used in context and have the meaning reinforced, while at the same time practising the use of expressions like “one” and “it” for refering to things elsewhere, a skill that comes up in reading a lot and is also specifically tested in one of the Cambridge exams (CPE?? Again, slipped my mind I’m afraid). Sounds boring, but actually means teacher and students have a good excuse for watching Frasier, Edward Scissorhands, The Life of Brian and Friends in class.

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With my TEFL.net Reviews Editor hat on, I will be giving a workshop at the Tokyo ETJ Expo and Tokyo English Language Book Fair at Toyo Gakuen University at 3:30pm on Sunday 4 November. When I say ”hat on”, I don’t mean that literally, despite the photos on TEFL.net. In fact, for people who only know me from here this might be your only chance to see me without a hat! (unless there are spotlights, in which case I might have to wear a hat to save too much shine off the bald patches). (more…)

Not completely TEFL-related, this one, so TTV doesn’t stand for Test Teach Vegetate (the alternative to Test Teach Test for students with limited attention spans like teenagers and kids whose additive and sugar fixes are starting to wear off). No, this is the newest addition to my list of “Linguistics that don’t put you off your breakfast” resources, Teachers’ TV.

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