Archive for the ‘Eikaiwa’ Category

“My first two years in Japan were spent teaching English… The students… studied English- or should I say, English was taught in their presence. Nothing ever seemed to sink in. Years of classes and endless tests and still they couldn’t master the intricacies of a simple ‘How are you?’ When I tried to have the most elemental of English conversations with them they looked at me with blank expressions, shrugged their shoulders, and said ‘Wakaranai’ (’Huh?’) They did this, I believe, just to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, these teenagers were polite and studious and well-mannered, but they were still teenagers, and teenagers are pretty well insufferable anywhere you go on this planet.” (more…)

Maybe a few more actually, as I didn’t have any record for the first few months. It’s not Craiglist, but as my blog stats are the closest thing I get to payment (I like to think of them as monopoly money) I’m going to give myself a pat on the back.

And why should you care? Well, this is your perfect chance to jump on the bandwagon and get yourself heard on TEFLtastic with comments, links and/ or guest articles. To illustrate what I mean, here goes with trying to drive up the traffic on my neglected Japanexplained blog with an unsubtle selling of my post The Big List of My Japanese Faux Pas, which is mainly about messups in the classroom and therefore nice and relevant to anyone who has taught foreigners I reckon… Just as unsubtle selling of your own blogs and sites, as long as also vaguely connected to TEFL and teaching abroad, also allowed! You can start in the comments to this post if you like.

Number one: cosplay

Only joking- I mean of course that the status of English teachers is not so obviously low that when I met the love of my life and asked her to marry me she actually agreed!

You won’t hear a lot about it on the TEFL forums, but there are actually a lot of other advantages to choosing Japan to teach in: (more…)

If you feel like being shocked, amused, and/ or disgusted, have a little browse through what a search for “Eikaiwa” (”English conversation” in Japanese) on youtube brings up 

“I will practice my English with you, if you will do me the honor”

“You keep alive just to practice your English?” (more…)

2007 was yet another year in which the world of TEFL made its way into the consciousness of the general public for all the wrong reasons (a crack down on teachers in Korea, English teaching sex offenders etc. etc), and Japan did its fair share of damage to our industry’s repuation too: (more…)

 …this happens:

No, I’m not talking about my inability to put a photo into my blog, which pales into insignificance compared to some of the incompetence of this industry of ours. The thing above was supposed to be a photo of the latest Gaba advertising campaign, which will be the topic of my latest rant

(more…)

…but nicely summarized. 

I take it all back about Time magazine. It may not be the Economist or L’Express, or even El Pais Sunday magazine, but they have managed the article about Nova from a publication outside Japan with least factual errors. My one quibble is using TOEIC scores as a comparison of language learning levels in different countries. (more…)

Amongst the doom and gloom that is the Lets Japan blog since the collapse of Nova became fact and there became nothing left to speculate about, comes possibly the only glimmer of hope that doesn’t involve thousands of refugee teachers flying home on their specially discounted (UNHCR?) flights- (more…)

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…)