I just finished my lesson with a man who is well known at Smith’s School of English Kyobashi. Not only is he a very talented singer (having played some demos for myself and fellow teachers in the lounge), but he also seems to be quite skilled in the field of acting. He always loves a challenge and picks things up quickly so we spent a good portion of the lesson going over grammar points that had been causing him problems.
We worked on making his responses shorter and more straightforward, as opposed to the roundabout way he’s used to saying things in Japanese. This was difficult for him at first because he feels reluctant about letting go of the Japanese translation. But I helped him to understand that it’s easier to use English if you think in English. He had been trying his best to create sentences in Japanese and then translate them into English – a strategy that can backfire once you realize that not everything translates so perfectly from one language into another.
By the end of the lesson, he was extremely excited to have many new English sentences to practice from in his notebook. He thanked me for the lesson and promised to have many more English examples to share with me next class after he reviews his notes.
-SJ
Leave a Reply