KIFL Senka Global Studies & Business Communications Skills - this week's BCS open class discussion reminder & 9/26 lessons plans/homework

Hello to all my Senka students,

How are you on this typhoon night? Hope you are not out of your homes and are safe and sound.

My apologies for posting on this late. I have now started my full schedule of all my work, and it's busy!

Image "Business Meeting" courtesy of luigi diamanti/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

REMEMBER! An open class in BCS this week (10/3)! You can do as we did last semester - an open discussion, or discussions, on a company, product or service of your choices - or something else that relates to business in some way.

Prepare something to bring to class - and as a whole group, we have to fill up almost 90 minutes of time! All of you carry this week's class!

And here are last week's lesson plans for your refresher:

Global Studies for 9/26:
1. Warmer & homework check
2. Unit 10 
* pg. 66 5a with pg. 67 6a
3. Activity - pg. 65 3a
4. Homework - check blog for 3 videos on education - choose 2 of the videos and write your impressions on them (see last week's post for questions to comment/reflect on)

Business Communications Skills for 9/26:
1. Warmer - taboo/non-taboo topics of conversation list
2. Unit 13 activities
a. "topics to talk about" handout
b. Unit 13 pp. 63/82 conversation making
3. Homework - Unit 13 worksheet handout

Maybe because of the typhoon, the wi-fi connection in my area is not letting me send anything - so I still can't receive the pictures of my board work from 9/26! That's why I wrote the lesson plans like this.

See you later! Take care!

芝浦工業大学Writing 1B 9/28 - organizing information & punctuation practice

Hello all Writing 1B students,

How are you? Today, let's practice organizing information (情報 を纏めて) & punctuation (句読).

WARMUP
Look at these images:

1.

2.       

3.

4.                                                    

     

                 

Which image does not match the others?  Now - go to your textbooks (if you have it today - if not, share a classmate's textbook).  

ACTIVITIES
1. Let's do Activity 1 on pages 2&3 in the textbook.
2. Go to page 8 in the textbook - on a Word document, copy the sentences in grammar guide part B and send them as a file attachment to a classmate.

HOMEWORK 
1. Do page 7 Activity 3 in your textbook. Write out the matching sentences on your Word file. Do not write the sentences that do not match.
2. Do page 8 Part B - add capital letters and punctuation to the sentences your partner sent you. Then send your sentences to my email address.

See you next week!

KIFL Senka Global Studies - 9/25 - three BBC videos about education

Hello to all my Senka students,

How are you? I have three short BBC videos today about education, dealing with three different countries - Finland, India, and South Korea.

Choose two of these videos and make some notes about your impressions. Look at these questions and answer them:

1. Do you recognize anything of your educational experiences in any of these?
2. Which one of these is most like your experience?
3. Which one is the least like your experience?
4. If you could combine features of these experiences into a single system, which parts would you take from each country?

This first one is about Finland.

The next one here is about India.

This last one is about South Korea.

See you next week!

芝浦工業大学Writing 1B 「初授業」

Hello,

How are you? We have three tasks today:

1. Pre-teaching surveys
2. About me
3. Getting to know your classmates

Task #1 - pre-teaching surveys - before you went online, I asked you to write some things about yourselves in your pre-teaching surveys. You have already started this task! I'll be happy to read them and learn about you.

Task #2 - about me - let me introduce myself to you. I'm Lee Arnold and I'm from the U.S., but I grew up in Australia.

Let me show you some pictures. They tell a story. Your job - very simple: anyone can ask me about this pictures in class. I'll be happy to tell you about them. Here's the first picture:

Here's some more. Ask me about these!

Please ask me about these! I have things to tell all of you - and I hope you have things to tell me about yourselves.

Task #3 - getting to know your classmates

Do you know your classmates? Let's do this activity!

Take 2 strips of notebook paper and write 2 sentences about yourself - 1 sentence each, on each paper. Make your sentences unique or interesting about yourself. Don't show anyone your sentences!

I will then collect these papers and mix them up, giving each of you other students' papers. Your job is to find the right owners of these papers. Maybe you will meet some new classmates and begin making some new friends today!

I'll be happy to get to know all of you! I'll try hard to learn your names. It won't be easy for me, and sometimes I'll forget - but I'll try. 

Let's have a great semester together!  See you next week!

KIFL English for the Hospitality Industry - some grammar/TOEIC-related videos & links

Hello to all my EH2 students,

Hope you're doing okay today. As a follow-up to the TOEIC practice we were doing this week, I have some grammar and TOEIC-related things for you. Take a look at them.

First, here are two videos about two functions of an important grammar point - the passive voice. We'll study it a little later, in the next unit in the textbook. It also might help you in your TOEIC studies.

You might also want to check out this link here. It's a test practice website with lots of exercises you can do anytime - including TOEIC practices.

See you in class on Tuesday!

KIFL Senka Business Communication Skills 9/19 lesson review & business podcast link

Hello again to my Senka students,

I decided to make a separate BCS post today. Here's our lesson plan from the Wednesday class:

1. Warmer - what's your network mapping? (with world map handouts)
2. Textbook
    * pg. 62  1
    * pg. 63  2 CD with 3
3. Activity 
    * pg. 64  2

While I gave no homework today in BCS, here's something for you to check out. It's a business podcast  about starting a conversation in a business setting. Hope you find it interesting and useful. Tell me what you think of it - post a comment or email me.

See you next week!

KIFL Senka Global Studies - 9/19 lesson plan review & word-learning technique #1

Hello to all my Senka students,

How are you? Hope you had a good day in class! 

Because my Smartphone's battery was low, I couldn't take a picture of the boardwork in GS today. So here's the lesson plan:

1. Warmer - your best & worst subjects in school Q&A
2. Textbook 
     * pg. 64 2a, 2c & 2b
     * pg. 65 2d discussion
3. Activity 
     * pg. 66 5a
4. Homework
     * pg. 66 6a - think of at least 4 goals & plans 

Now - at the link, check out this word-learning technique. 

This was originally for Hoshi University. But you can apply this technique to our class and the vocabulary in the unit about education we're reading now. 

Try it out and tell me what you think by early next week - post a comment or email me. 

See you then!

For my teaching colleagues, associates & friends everywhere - some new changes to the blog

Hello to all my teaching colleagues, associates & friends, 

This is my first time posting for other than students, but I'll still keep it short. For any of you who have checked out this blog from time-to-time - I've made some changes not only for my students, but also now for all of you. These changes will also be just a start. I hope they'll be worthwhile!

I have separated the interesting sites sections in the sidebar between sites for students, and now, sites for teachers. I've included a few warhorses (Dave's ESL Cafe, JALT and such) with more smaller-audience (but no less important) sites. I intend to add and expand as I go, as my own networks expand, including the addition of Japanese websites, both for teachers and learners of English and Japanese.

I have also added a new list of sites from outside of TEFL. I've done this solely to let people who wander onto this site know more about my interests, likes and thoughts away from TEFL. I will also expand this list as well - but it will not detract from the core of what this blog is about. And if students themselves (mine or any of yours) happen to go there as well - they're welcome!

(Here's me making fondue at home in winter, earlier this year. I cook some specialty dishes for family members, and friends when we have them over. I'm not a brilliant chef or anything, but I try hard at it!)

See all of you later!

KIFL Senka & English for Hospitality Industry students - some new interesting sites (Part 2)

Hello to all my Senka & EH2 students,

How are you? Hope you are looking forward to the weekend!

I have been busy updating the blog. Hope you like the changes to it. If you look at the long red sidebar on the right side of the blog, you'll see some more websites and blogs for students that I have found. I don't want to explain too much - so click on them and take a quick look at each one!

I hope you can find something here that will be useful or enjoyable for you. I will keep searching for new things to upload, so keep checking.

Senka students - did you see the animal experiments video posting? What did you think of it?
EH2 students - I'll remind you about this next week - but check out the "unprofessional front desk clerk" video. It's funny - but serious too!

See you next week!

KIFL - Senka & English for Hospitality Industry students special posting - some new interesting sites

Hello to all my Senka and EH2 students,

I would like to introduce to you three new interesting sites I have found.

The first is called Elllo (English Listening Lesson Library Online). This is a teacher-created website with natural conversations and listening practice, and some videos. Feel free to check this out anytime.

Another is Language Japan, which is a student-created blog. On it, students explain young people's life in Japan, and points of Japanese culture and lifestyle, in English, with some Japanese content. If you would like to know how you might be able to explain Japan better with any foreign friends, either in person, on Facebook, or on blogs, this is a really good site.

The last for today is ManyThings - a good, general website with lots of things on it about pronunciation, slang, listening, among many other points of English.

Check any of these out anytime you like. From here, I will search out new sites I hope will be to your interest and bookmark them. So there will be more to come! 

Special thanks to my friends and colleagues Scott Bohart and Michael Stout for bookmarking and explaining these links online!

KIFL English for the Hospitality Industry 2A 9/12 - the unprofessional front desk clerk

Hello to all EH2 students,

Welcome back to KIFL! I have been glad to see all of you again.

As a refresher for Unit 7, here's a video about a front desk clerk. But he's not professional. In fact, he's really unprofessional! How many unprofessional points can you find in this video?

Write down everything he does that is unprofessional. Try to find as many things as you can. Tell me next week what you found!

KIFL Senka Global Studies & Business Communications Skills - Global Studies - animals in medical testing

Hello to all my Senka students,

It was great to see you again after the summer vacation! I'm happy to be back and start the fall term with all of you.

For the Global Studies class, here are two videos about the use of animals in medical testing:

This video supports the use of animals in medical tests.

This video is against the use of animals in medical tests. 

WARNING: This second video may be difficult to watch, because it shows animals being handled in a rough way, and being shouted at. But what do you think? See you in class on Wednesday.