I was really looking forward to today, this group of private teachers in Fukuoka is one of the best in the country, they are really keen for new ideas, are totally genki and it’s about the only place in the country I can do the workshop in English and everyone can keep up!! I’ve also done presentations here before a few times, including a full day games workshop last year, so today I figured I’d do all the latest games and phonics songs, just like a genki “top up”!

But I don’t know if it was the weather ( it was really muggy because of the typhoon), the lack of a decent sound system ( we checked the system at the beginning, but it broke down on the first song!! Just imagine your favourite film without a soundtrack and that’s what an English lesson without songs is!), or the fact that there were lots of new people who hadn’t heard of Genki English before, but things just didn’t seem to be as genki as usual!! They were good, but not totally hyper like normal. We did Harry Potter, some Phonics Songs, Cowboy, Soldiers and Ninjas, Where, where, where?, Doctor Doctor, Rock Paper Scissors, Thank you and I also planned on doing the new Spiderman game, but I didn’t get round to it as the goal setting bit got a bit bogged down. I think here is really where the problem is; as I’d been here before, I assumed I wouldn’t have to do any confidence speaking ( the main reason Genki English gets such good reviews is not the content, but the motivation talking) but I found that it is still really necessary for the new goal setting part of the workshop. The only problem is that I have to approach the problem from completely different angles for native speakers ( whose main problem is the parents who destroy any confidence the kids have) and Japanese teachers ( who very often underestimate what their kids can do). But that means I have to do the Japanese part in Japanese, and the English part in fast English just to get the jokes and stories in to get the point across, but today I was speaking in simplified English so I sort of fell between the two stools and it didn’t really work! So I think I really have to get the Goal Setting topic on the website pretty soon, and also info to pass to parents so they help and not hinder their child’s progress!

But overall the teachers were still great as usual, just not quite the easy ride I had hoped for! With so many teachers with so many different backgrounds, and compared with last week when I had 8.5 hours it was very difficult getting everyone on the same page, so I think I’m really going to have to look at a Genki English video course where teachers can actually study how to teach Genki English form the beginning in the structured, inclusive and gradually improving way I do on the week long workshops. I’m sure this would help a lot! But finding the time to produce this is maybe another issue altogether…