Last week we had a request for ideas for teaching school subjects. Regular forum contributor Yumiko has sent in a couple of suggestions. 1. Scatter picture cards of various subjects around the room. 2. The teacher calls out a day of the week. 3. The kids have to pick up the subjects that they have…

After spending most of the past few weeks, and this morning, recording in the studio, I spent the afternoon in Starbucks chopping up audio files and making the new Genki Korean games. The thing that struck me the most when I came to play them was just how hard or easy the games can be,…

Quite a few of the teachers last week also taught Business English. A lot of Genki English style games are actually used by businesses in in-house training ( I learnt a few good ideas on the course I did at Arthur Andersen). At the end of last week’s workshop teachers were saying “Well, yes it…

With all the games on the site, one question that often crops up is “Do I really have to do a different game each lesson?”. The easy answer is, of course, “no, not at all”. Whilst the English content of the lessons should always be on an upward spiral ( there’s not point just doing…

Reader BBB put a comment on the forum the other day about the “Japanese stick” idea I mentioned in the last post. . The comment being that it’s not a good idea to use in places like Okinawa where the Japanese authorities used to use a similar technique to shame people for using their native…