I always think that time management is one of the biggest problems in schools. Tim Ferriss’ new book “The Four Hour Work Week” ( which is just what it says, being razor sharp with how you spend your work time, so you can spend it doing what you really want to do.) may be taking…

You often hear about why Japanese people are so slim. And I’ve only just realised why.. I used to always get really frustrated at banquets in Japan as you have trays and trays of really nice food, but it was all “good stuff” like sushi and sashimi and gorgeous vegetables etc. etc. When I’m really…

UPDATE:  These quizzes have all now been added as “games” to the Teacher’s Set software e.g. check out the Fruit Market or I’m thirsty lessons!   Just spent the morning working through my email mountain ( it’s amazing how 2 days without net access builds up!). One of the emails was about the mp3 files of…

Whenever I do workshops every person in the room is involved. The reason is that however much you read about a game or song, or even watch videos, it’s not until you try it as a student that you actually see why it works. For example when I first started on the JET programme everyone…

Popped back to Genki HQ in Ehime today. We’ve just ordered another lot of the Kids English video set. The thing is that each set comes in two huge boxes. They had to hire a four tonne truck just to bring them all down from Tokyo! They’re now all safely tucked away in the Genki…

One of the reasons I wrote the Genki English songs was that although there are many songs that you can use for listening in class, there are very few that you can get your kids to actually sing in one lesson. But that’s not to say you can’t use the Genki English songs for listening….