If you happened to live in Kagoshima ( or anywhere within an hour or two’s travel), today’s JALT Conference was certainly worthwhile. Although some of the workshops were a little dubious ( fruit basket!), some of them were really good and there were so many of them! Unfortunately two of the ones I wanted to…

The worksheet I put up the other week for the “Where’s the …?” hip hop track has proved really popular since I’ve started demoing it in workshops. Originally the songs were intended for learners to listen to on their ipods, but it seems lots of teachers are having great success with using them in normal…

I was supposed to get all this on the site yesterday, but hopefully today is not too late to catch the big Japan vs. Brazil game tomorrow night! First up we have a funky MP3 download of the new Genki English World Cup Song. It’s a really great warm up, and has lots of useful…

Today was very topsy turvey. This morning started out with a show for the kids in the city sponsored kids club. Every Saturday the kids meet for English classes taught by members of the community. If all the primary school teachers in town were doing their jobs, I guess the city wouldn’t need this club,…

These second time schools are something special. Last time I did the basic show here in November, and today I figured on doing something a bit more challenging, so after the usual warm ups, we went through “What do you do?“. That was amazing, the whole school, 6th graders included, were just enthralled by it….

I had a bit of a challenge this morning. Before the main show with all the kids, I had an hour with the three 3rd grade classes and their parents. Motivating adults is quite easy, and motivating 3rd graders is even easier, but not at the same time!! I starting off aiming at the kids,…