Introduction

Hello! My name is Edward Iwaskow and I am the new teacher at Smith’s Otsu as of December 2007. I live in Otsu-shi, about 15 minutes bike ride from the school. I have been in Japan since January 2007, and I really love it here. My hometown is a small city on the west coast of Canada called Nanaimo, which is about 1 hour 30 minutes by ferry from Vancouver. In my free time I enjoy mountain biking, photography, gardening, hiking and most outdoor sports. In summer I especially enjoy surfing on Shikoku, and in winter I hope to do some snowboarding in Nagano.

I am really enjoying the Smith’s curriculum, and look forward to teaching it and expanding on it. I have several years experience teaching high school and university math and sciences. I have been in Japan for 1 year, the first 10 months i was teaching at another eikaiwa. For low level and beginner students, i hope to get you speaking confidently within as short a period as possible, and then work on expanding your vocabulary and confidence with longer structures through simple sentence building drills. For mid and high level students, i will help you improve on your current knowledge, promote more natural rhythm, more confident and comprehensive responses, and increase your overall comprehension.

I try to make my classes as enjoyable as possible, while maximizing the students opportunity to grow. I will maintain a 70% student talk time in classes, and constantly evaluate students’ areas of need. Most classes will incorporate a short correction period where areas of weakness can be strengthened. I am open to suggestions, so please dont be shy to come forward and tell me your opinions of my classes. Furthermore, i will be hosting regular English Event Nights at the school to promote natural english usage. These events nights will often be theme oriented, such as “movie night” or “book night” or “halloween party” and so on. I will try to post these event nights, as well as other special events, on the Smith’s website a few weeks in advance.

I hope you enjoy my lessons, and that together we can works towards improving your spoken english skills!
Edward