Today I was invited by Setsunan University in Osaka to give a one hour lecture and a two hour workshop to their teacher trainees and local elementary school teachers. In the event we had over 100 people, some coming from as far away as Shikoku and even Tokyo!
In amongst all the motivation and talking parts here are some of the activity requests that we had:
– Disco Warm Up + Warm Up Game, making mistakes is good, showing GE is a little different
– What’s your name? – eye contact, body posture, confidence
– Super hero – communication skills and confidence
– Left & Right in German – Dekiru, dekiru, dekiru isn’t just for English, it’s for everything!
– Star Wars Light Saber Battle Game in German – a popular request, now you know how the kids feel!
– Do you have any pets? – pronunciation from the computer, not the teacher. English is in sentences, not just words.
– Gokiburi Game – another request!
One other request was for ideas to teach “May I help you?” for shops. To which I politely refused. 🙂
Why? Because it is one of the worst questions you can ask if you actually use English in real life business situations. In Japanese textbooks they have it as the translation of “irashaimase” – a fantastic Japanese phrase that we should have in English but don’t.
But if you hear “May I help you?” the automatic answer is “no.”
So sales staff are always taught not to say it.
The normally taught English is “How may I help you?” where you have to respond.
Mind you that makes a lesson much more difficult as there are so many possible answers. Funnily enough in Australia last week all the shop staff everywhere were asking “How are you?” which might be one alternative!
Anyway we simply did the Gokiburi Game again with the target language as “How may I help you?” and “I’d like a…” plus the animal that you are at the moment!
It was also good to see people who thought that Genki English was mainly about the games, find out that it’s actually the songs that get us the amazing results in the tests. Of course the games are an important part though! And it was great to chat to the professors about my phd!
Overall it was very good. Doing an interview at the beginning rather than my normal self introduction was OK, but it did lead to people thinking “yeah, whatever”, so I talked about the TV and development stuff near the end and suddenly everyone started paying attention again. It’s amazing what being on TV can do in Japan!
And overall for 3 hours it was pretty good with just about everyone giving good marks and the university very happy that so many new people came to see it!
It was great to be back in Osaka again so thank you very much to everyone who came and thank you for the great Chinese food and beers in the evening!
Sounds like a really good event. I like the idea of using German too.
I have to agree about the “May I help you?” request. In Austria, in most shops, the sales staff always ask “Can I help you?” I and most other people always say ” No,thank you I am just looking.” Interestingly though in one shop ( it’s like Boots in the UK) the staff always ask “Can you find everything you are looking for?” or “We have a special offer on …” to be fair I often then let them help me and even check out the offers too!! The power of marketing.
Or the ‘Can I help you find what you’re looking for? What size do you need?’ I like the special offer one, that should get the customer’s attention!
Centuries ago when I worked in a large department store, they told me to say simply after a few minutes, “If you need any help, I’m right over here.” The ‘I’m not pushy’ approach. Actually it worked super well!
FL store/shopping lingo…. a must for every woman! When I went to Brazil, that’s what I made sure to learn before going!! I didn’t want to rely on my husband’s presence to translate everything for me….