Phonics ( basically teaching “ah, buh, cuh” instead of “Ay, Bee, See”) is becoming a worldwide pandemic at the moment. The UK & Australia have recently decided to bring it back on a national level, and in the States courses such as “Hooked on Phonics” are hugely popular. The idea being that if the kids…

I just watched the American Idol final on Fox tonight ( Japan is a week late). There were special guests everywhere and brilliant songs, what a fantastic piece of TV. Great entertainment is all about moving people, changing emotions to inspire, to relax, to take people on a trip where you acquire knowledge without you…

One of the other workshops I attended last week in Kobe was on storytelling in the classroom. Funnily enough when I looked at the name of the presenter, it was Hamish Buchan from the British Council. The British Council, in various countries, have been really great over the last year or so ( have a…

I’m back in Ehime this weekend, for the first time since November. When I used to be a JET I could never understand why ALTs from the big cities complained about living in the countryside. What’s not to like about being surrounded by greenery, clean air and lots of fresh food? But after being in…

Yesterday, after having meetings all morning ( lots of new stuff coming up on the site!), in the afternoon I popped along to some of the ALT workshops to see what was going on. The first one was by an elementary school ALT, Stein Setvik from Nagahama City Elementary English Program in Shiga Prefecture, and…

Today the Yomiuri had the second in its series of articles about elementary school English. This time from one of the opponents, Prof. Yukio Otsu. You can read the article here ( note: the link will expire soon). He seems to be of the familiar, but not widely held outside Japan, view that English shouldn’t…