Every English teacher in Japan is constantly asked by students how they can become better at English. When my students ask me, I say you just need to allow yourself the chance to use English more every day. That means you must read it, write it, speak it and listen to it as many hours a day as you can. Pure and simple, practice makes perfect! That’s the old adage (or saying) that I always heard while growing up no matter what I was trying to become good at. For my students and others I created a YouTube channel for them to practice. So far several students have used it and I can see a big difference in their ability since they started doing it. My hope is that they will reach a higher level and really start to enjoy using English. The true measure of my success is how many of my students become proficient in English and really come to enjoy using it.
On YouTube you can search for eigomanokamoto or 英語上達、英会話上達 to find my 31 videos. I have gotten over 21,000 views in the past 8 months. What is interesting is that most of the views are for part 1 in my saga about a fictitious company that develops and manufactures robots. So far I have put up episodes 1 through 12 for listening practice and episodes 1 through 6 for reading practice. I am still writing the story. Recently I spoke to one of my high level students and she seems to be very interesting in helping me to write some of the future episodes. That should be fun for her and I could really use the help.
Here’s the link to my channel—> EigoManOkamoto on YouTube
Al-
Love your videos. Sorry to rain on your parade, but the old adage you quote is incorrect. A hockey coach in Canada explained this mistaken statement to me many years ago. Practice does NOT make perfect. Practice makes PERMANENT. If you practice wrong, you will permanently develop bad habits. BUT if you practice correctly, you will become perfect. So a more correct adage is “PERFECT PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT”. And it’s usually permanent.
Edward, SSE Ohtsu
Edward,
Thanks for making that clear and you are very correct. In case of our students, we must make sure that they practice correct English to prevent incorrect and bad habits from becoming permanent. Perfect Practice Makes Perfect! Right on!
Al, SSE Okamoto
Plain and simple – the more work someone does…the faster they improve. It’s not rocket science. These videos are great and allow students to go over them again and again.
Edward – your coach was a smart man. It’s part of some of the self-help books and something that EVERYONE should keep in mind.
Randomly… that same coach spent a year in Japan many years ago, coaching hockey here. Strange how things go around. He was full of great advice that is applicable to pretty much everything in life. His favourite anacronym was P.P.O. (Positives to be Proud Of). Sounds a lot like the P.E.I. (Positive Emotional Information) acronym. After every game he would write down a list of all the positives we had to be proud of. Nothing negative. All positive. Good guy!