Author Archives: Richard Graham

Japanese Culture? Transformers!

Over on the Genki Japan site we have lots and lots of people learning Japanese. The main reason for most of them is so that they can experience Japanese culture in real Japanese. Certainly no one in this day and age would say “Right, I want to learn Japanese so I can tell Japanese people…

https://genkienglish.net/teaching/japanese-culture-transformers/

No study? You still know loads!

Sometimes in higher grades kids will have taken on board influences from teachers, parents and TV and sometimes in class will gladly boast “Eigo wakaranai!” – “I don’t understand any English”. Obviously you need to stamp this thinking out before it spreads. I’ve just written up an idea I use that works really well, and…

https://genkienglish.net/teaching/no-study-you-still-know-loads/

Okayama – Two times? Too much!

I’m getting a bit fed up of this. I’ve known the teacher at today’s school for quite a while and she’s really nice. Initially the school refused to let her have the travel expenses for me to come, which of course isn’t a good thing. But they came up with the idea of inviting the…

https://genkienglish.net/teaching/okayama-two-times-too-much/

Kyoto – Pro Rules!

Wow, what a difference when people pay to attend. Today’s teachers were absolutely fantastic. We had a ton of questions, tons of attention, lots of activities and a fantastic buzz at the end of the day. Activities wise we did: * Write up a list of “joys” of your job ( for the bad days),…

https://genkienglish.net/teaching/kyoto-pro-rules/

Kyoto – Kids in Kimono

Tomorrow I have a full day 9000 yen workshop for private school teachers here, so today they asked me to do a paid for show for their kids. I haven’t done any of these in a long while, but we had hundreds of parents and kids attend today, which is an amazing turn out. Due…

https://genkienglish.net/teaching/kyoto-kids-in-kimono/

Aichi – Another pilot school…

Instead of seeing today’s school as part of the messed up 3 day workshop plan, I simply looked on it as a “from the beginning” workshop for a new school. This is another one of the Ministry Of Education’s pilot schools for this year ( are there any schools that have not been pilot schools?)…

https://genkienglish.net/teaching/aichi-another-pilot-school/