The Australian press continue to give more coverage to the collapsing Nova story than even newspapers in Japan. I confidently predict that the next publication to cover the story will be the London Evening Standard, worried that the oversupply of Aussies and Kiwis working in London bars will become intolerable once more unskilled younguns from Down Under come flooding out of Japan with nowhere else to go. (more…)
Up bright and early on Sunday morning, crisp blue sky, Fuji visible in the distance, no-one but me and the power walking pensioners about, discovered a well-hidden and peaceful little local temple, came back home to sit down with a couple of slices of toast and Marmite, a cup of Yorkshire Tea and the Sunday papers, but… (more…)
I think I feel another spurt of worksheets coming on, this time starting with a whole new page of EFL video worksheets. Feedback gratefully accepted, apart from on sorting out the fact you have to copy and paste into Word to use them, as the technicalities are beyond me…
No energy, no powers of concentration, so no reading books about teaching this week- again! Did have enough energy to have a look at TED again, and found an extremely interesting one about language in apes here, and one that was fun about dictionaries here. Didn’t learn much that will be changing my lessons in the near future, but one thing at a time…
Have also remembered a couple more books that give you your linguistics in the kind of bite
I’m on a roll with the English-teaching related links today, so prepare to be overwhelmed. First of all my much loved International Herald Tribune (I now don’t bother with the Japan Times- 180 yen?!- or Daily Yomiuri if I can’t find a copy of my IHT and missed it when I went home and was reduced to reading the Guardian), seems to be having a language-linked themed edition today. We’ve got dying creole langugages in Colombia, the Orwellian uses of language of the CCP (not so unlike the recent “beautiful Japan” silliness of the LDP in Japan, recently scrapped, thank god), there might have been talking Neanderthals (think I might have taught one of those in my class with Bursa city council), and several others which I can’t find at the moment because it’s easier to pretend you are working while writing your blog than it is to do so while rustling a newspaper…
With lesson materials already written and blog links sorted, decided to switch off brain completely till Monday and just go for giggles. Like a lost key turning up when you’ve given up looking for it,
I don’t know if anyone has coined the term “desperation googling” yet, but that is the only description for what I have just been doing. My (fairly typical in Japan) Business English class that don’t really want to study Business English had been told that they were going to get the book this week (International Express Intermediate New Edition- yuck!) because I couldn’t think of a single other practice speaking activity for the Past Perfect and Past Continuous. And then I realised that I’d left the textbook at head office… (more…)
… according to this Japan-related article by the Guardian. I’m guessing that is because the agriculture ministry is in charge of huge monsters that come out of Tokyo bay, leaving another ministry to sort out Richard Nixon in Futurama style giant robots, in the same way that one ministry gets horse racing, one cycle racing and one speed boat racing (really!)
This Japanese male geeky obsessiveness is just one of many examples of the similarities between Japan and the UK- yes, train spotters are here too, and totally unheard of in Italy, Turkey, Thailand or Spain. Other similarities include-
As the mudslinging in the election really seems to be starting, I feel I have to make a statement on the absolutely untrue rumours spread by the famously right wing host on KYTEFL Radio. Let me make this very clear- (more…)
About the only good news in the fading away of Nova (the Macdonalds of English conversation Eikaiwa schools in Japan) is that the Japanese press seem to be working themselves up to a wolf-like group decision that Mr Monkeybridge (Sahashi-san), the CEO, is wounded enough that they can afford to tear into him, and just saying nothing may no longer be enough to keep himself out of the papers, even when there are seemingly more important “still no progress in the North Korean hostage thing” stories to keep the punters distracted.
Of course there’s nothing good about mob justice, unless of course it is picking on someone who deserves it and it’s the only justice going… And so to today’s news: (more…)
And you thought I was just joking when I said I was going to grind down your resistance with a litany of metaphors for teaching… So far we’ve had language learning as swimming, lesson planning as sheep dog trials, and now teaching as toilet cleaning: (more…)