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A Load of Rubbish (Feedback)
I’m not sure if this was actually a competition or not, but in case anyone is interested, the result was a narrow victory (at the time of writing) to YU (21 comments) against Biwa (20 comments). You two must spend…
Read MoreA Load of Rubbish
[wpaudio url=”https://www.btbpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/A-Load-of-Rubbish.mp3″ text=”Click to listen”] As I’m sure you all know, throwing out rubbish in Japan can be a very complicated business. For me, this is always one of the most difficult things to figure out when I move to…
Read MoreIntroducing Polls (Feedback)
Thanks for participating in our first online poll. As I am writing this, the most popular answer is “I would never vote for right-wing parties,” but there were also a lot of votes for “I might vote for them because…
Read MoreIntroducing Polls
[wpaudio url=”https://www.btbpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Introducing-Polls.mp3″ text=”Click to listen”] Last week I added a new feature to the blog that allows all of you to answer a question or “vote” by clicking on a button in the entry. I thought it might be fun…
Read MoreTeaching Students How to "Take" a Lesson
Here is a video of the presentation I gave at the 2012 JALT Hokkaido Conference at Hokkai Gakuen University in Sapporo. Apologies for the occasional focus problems. I have posted a video of the slideshow below the main video. The…
Read MoreOur House (Feedback)
Thanks for all your comments on this week’s entry. I am doing the feedback early this week because I’m going to Hokkaido tomorrow, so I will be busy getting ready for that. When I read your comments, I couldn’t help…
Read MoreHokkaido JALT Presentations
David Barker will be presenting at the Hokkaido JALT conference in Sapporo on Saturday November 3rd. His presentation is from 2.15 to 3, and the title is “Teaching students how to ‘take’ a lesson.” He will also be a member…
Read MoreOur House
[wpaudio url=”https://www.btbpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Our-House.mp3″ text=”Our House”] Now that I have a great job in a great place, I am hoping to build a new house here in Gifu either next year or the year after. I have to build it before the…
Read MoreThe "Busy" Myth (Feedback)
Thanks for all your contributions to the discussion. I’m afraid to say that I agreed with pretty much all of the comments on the Japan Today article. In other countries, companies do things called “time and motion” studies. This means…
Read MoreThe "Busy" Myth
[wpaudio url=”https://www.btbpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-_Busy-Myth_.mp3″ text=”The ‘Busy’ Myth”] I think we have talked about this topic before, but it was a long time ago, and I read an article yesterday that made me think of it again.
Read MoreA Host Family (Feedback)
Thank you for all your questions and suggestions for Kattie. She emailed me to say that the information you had given her was very useful. I think we also broke the record for views of a blog entry this week,…
Read MoreJALT National Conference
Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation on Saturday. There were more than 30 people there, so I guess a lot of teachers are interested in learning more about giving presentations. I have uploaded a video of my presentation along…
Read MoreHow Not to Give a Presentation
Thank you to everyone who attended my presentation at the JALT National Conference in Hamamatsu last Saturday. Even though it was labelled as a commercial presentation, I think there were around thirty people there, so it seems that a lot…
Read MoreA Host Family
Thanks for all the comments and discussion on the last entry. “I can’t claim credit for…” means “I can’t say it is because of me that something good happened.” You could also use it in a negative way to say,…
Read MoreWays of Making the Blog More Accessible (Feedback)
Thank you for all the feedback, and thank you for your kind words about the blog. As most of your comments were in Japanese, it took me a long time to read through them all, but that was great practice…
Read MoreWays of Making the Blog More Accessible
Sorry for the late entry this week. There is a big conference in Hamamatsu this weekend, and I’m rushing to prepare for that. Also, my new university classes started last week, so I have a lot of preparation to do…
Read MoreThe Part Where… (Feedback)
We set a new record this week – 79 comments! In some ways, that is a great thing, but I wonder whether it might put some people off reading because there are just too many of them. Anyway, that will…
Read MoreWhat's in a Name?
In a previous post on my blog for azargrammar.com, I suggested that any teacher who wishes to be popular with their students will need to make a serious effort to learn and remember their names. Of course, I’m sure there…
Read MoreThe Part Where…
How was your weekend? I hope no one was too badly affected by the typhoon. We got some very strong winds and rain here in Gifu, but it was nothing too serious. Actually, I went running at the peak of…
Read MoreFalling Pay and Rising Taxes (Feedback)
Looking at this week’s comments, it seems that pay and bonus levels do appear to be falling all over Japan. I must admit I thought this would be the case, but it’s interesting to hear other people’s experiences. I guess…
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