Sorry guys, no message today. I had my older daughter’s undokai (sports festival) today and I’m pooped. I’m going to bed and sleeping as long as I can. I’ll have more to say tomorrow. Good night all.

Hello all. I hope this finds you fine and dandy. Things here at Able School have been turned a bit upside down this past week or so and now I can let you all know what’s been going on. Because of some recent developments, we will have to move the school come June. We are sad to see the building go, but, I look at this like a new opportunity. We have already arranged for classes to be held at other locations and, if things go as planned, everything should run smoothly and I promise that there will not be any loss of quality of classes.

Our children’s classes will now be held at Miharabunka Kaikan, next to the Kanda town hall. We have arranged rooms for classes already. The adult classes will be held at a new location, next to the Kanda train station. Yoko Shiozuka has very kindly offered to let us use her classrooms which will work quite nicely for us.

I’ll be giving out memo’s this week and next with more details as to the locations and the room numbers.

I know this is a big surprise to everyone, myself included. But, as I said, this is an opportunity for some very good things. A bit of a surprise, but, I do think that we will see some positive results from all of this quite soon.

Thank you for your understanding. See you soon.

Jason McDonald.

Hello again everyone.  I hope that you have had a good Golden Week.  I know that I sure did.  We had lots of fun around here. 

If you remember last year, I did a travel English class at the North Community center in Kanda.  Well, I’ll be doing it again starting this week.  It should be interesting.  I always like to meet new people.  I’m really quite excited. 

We also have a new class starting this year at the school.  A mommy’s English class for mom’s and babies on Wednesday afternoons.  This Wednesday is our first class.  If you know any new parents out there that are looking for a class like this, be sure to pass along the news.

Just a short note tonight.  I’ll be seeing all of you soon.

Just making sure that everyone knows.  There will be no classes this week.  Have a good Golden Week everyone.

Sorry about that ladies and gentlemen. Last night I was just pooped and I went to bed very early. So, you get me on Monday morning, rather than on Sunday night. Not to worry, I certainly have not forgotten.

Just to let you all know, next week is Golden Week and Able School will be closed from the 30th of April until the 7th of May.

A little bit of late news today. Over the past few weeks, we did a short story, Save the Date by Joe Zieja in our high level class. Fun story featuring Mayans and magical calendars. Very funny. I had contacted Mr. Zieja to use his story in class and he was so great. Just sent along the story quick as you please and let me use it. I think he was very happy. He had this to write on his blog

A few days later, I got an email from an unassuming gentleman in Japan. That’s right, Japan. A member of the Able School of English had liked my story so much he wanted to use it as a piece of the school curriculum. I can only assume, therefore, that he wanted to teach his children a.) how to make themselves the outcasts of society, b.) how to enchant a calendar or c.) how to avoid being killed by a hoard of Mayan warriors. These are the only things I think are educationally valuable about that story. Needless to say, I am flattered. It means that not only am I international, but that my strangeness will be talked about in languages I don’t understand.

Thank you very much Mr. Zieja and I look forward to more of your stories in the future.

I went to a seminar this weekend and the discussion focused around the idea of what exactly does fluency mean. It’s an interesting question when you get right down to it. After all, isn’t the goal of learning another language to be fully fluent in that language? Seems to make sense when you think about it. When you learn to play piano, the goal is to play that piano as well as you can.

But, stop and think about that for a second. If you’re learning piano, at what point are you “fluent”? How good do you have to be before you can say, “I can play piano”? Both my daughters learn piano and my younger daughter has just started. She can play a few simple songs on the piano. Does that mean she can “play the piano”? Well, no, probably not, because, aside from a few songs, she cannot really play anything else. She’s just started and, while the songs she can play, she can play well enough, she does not have the skills to be able to pick up other songs and play them on her own.

So, what does that mean for you, the English student? Well, if you’re reading this, you’re probably not someone who has just started to learn English. You’ve been studying for some time. You have skills. You can do some things really well, some other things well enough and you struggle with some other things. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with not being perfect.

An interesting point was raised at the seminar about pauses. One way some people measure fluency is by how fast the speaker can speak. It makes some sense after all. If you can speak quickly, then you must be like one of those announcers on CNN and they’re obviously fluent. But, listen to a speech by US President Barak Obama. If you listen to him speak, you will hear all sorts of pauses and he speaks quite slowly. I don’t think too many people would question whether he is a fluent English speaker or not.

Really, speed is not that important. Speaking quickly or slowly will not result in someone thinking that your English is better or worse. Find a speed that is comfortable for you and that is perfectly fine. There is an English saying, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” What that means is that there is a point whereby constantly trying to make things perfect, we actually make things worse. By always correcting ourselves and constantly trying to make every sentence perfect, we won’t allow any mistakes and we wind up not talking at all.

Something to think about.

I was having a discussion with one of my students this week and he was surprised that many of his students could not use cursive writing. I suppose I should explain that a bit more. In English, there are two writing styles, printing and cursive. ((Actually, there are quite a few more, but, for this discussion, we’ll limit ourselves to these two)) Printing is what everyone recognizes. What you are reading right now is a version of printing where the letters are each separate and quite square looking. Cursive, on the other hand, is more flowing and all the letters are run together. Here are examples of Lower Case Writing and Upper Case Writing.

Talking to teacher friends of mine back home, I realize that a lot of students aren’t really being taught cursive writing anymore and I am fairly sure that the Japanese schools here are no longer teaching it at all. So, when you’re writing, be careful how you write. If you use cursive, the other person just might not be able to read what you write.

This month, we continued our music theme and stepped out of the 50′s and into the 60′s. See if you can fill in the blanks for the following song, “These Boots are Made for Walking” by Nancy Sinatra:

These Boots are Made for Walking

You keep __________________
You’ve got something for me.
Something you call ______________,
But confess.
You’ve been messing
Where you _________ have been a messing
And now someone else
Is getting all your __________.

These boots are made for walking,
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days
These boots are gonna walk all over you.

You keep _______________,
When you ought to be truthing
And you keep _________________
When you ought to not bet.
You keep saming
When you ought to be __________________.
Now what’s right is right,
But you ain’t been right ___________.

These boots are made for walking,
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days
These boots are gonna walk all over you.

You keep ____________________
Where you shouldn’t be playing
And you keep thinking
That you´ll never get ________________.
Ha! I just found me
A brand new box of matches, yeah
And what he knows
You ain’t had time to learn.

These boots are made for walking,
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days
These boots are gonna walk all over you.

Are you ready boots? Start walkin’!

Akiko had her Culture Exchange party on last Tuesday.  It was a great success.  We had about fifty people in attendance and even made the six o’clock news on NHK.  Very cool.  We played a number of games and a group came in and gave a show of a Kamishibai (Traditional Japanese Storytelling).  Then we all ate lots of snacks and onigiri.  If I can, I’ll try to post the news report later this week.

In school news, we have a lot of new faces starting next month.  I hope that many of you will find your way here and share your experiences.  See you all soon.

 

Hello everyone. I hope that you all are fine and well on this Sunday evening. Today has been a pretty busy day for me. My older daughter had her birthday today, so we took her to the Hard Rock Cafe in Fukuoka for a party. It was a lot of fun. If you’ve never been, you really should check out the Hard Rock Cafe.

In other news, Akiko is having a Culture Exchange party on Tuesday the 20th at 10 AM at Mihara Bunka Kaikan. We’ve invited lots and lots of people, both Japanese and not and we hope to see even more come on out and have fun together. She’s really gone all out planning all sorts of things. It should be a great time.

That’s all for now. Have a good week and I’ll talk to you next week.