Today, my helper and I were passing out flyers in front of the JR Settsumotoyama Station and my student’s mother stopped by to introduce herself and say that her son had told her that I was a great teacher! Wow! That surely made my day. I thanked her and told her that her son was working hard on his English and that he pushes me to do my best.
After she said goodbye and entered the station, I thought back to the last lesson and remembered how he had asked me to help him practice some translation of Japanese to English and vice-versa so that he could prepare for a meeting between his company’s Hong Kong sales staff and his Japanese engineering staff. It seems that he often has to do this since the engineers don’t speak or understand English well. Of course I was happy to oblige since I had done this on nearly hundreds of occasions in my previous job as an automotive program manager working between my German customer and my company’s Japanese engineering staff. For me it was easy since I have so much experience doing it. This also gave me the opportunity to act the part of the Japanese engineers and pose technical questions and give responses in Japanese that he had to translate into English for his Hong Kong sales staff. He appreciated this practice and maybe was a little impressed with my technical Japanese ability. Having worked in engineering and management for the past 26 years for 3 Japanese companies, I have acquired a lot of good experience that I can use to be a good language coach for my students.
It is a great day indeed! スミス英会話岡本校
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