ESL - Methods

(2) The Rainbow Valentine Shop:

Eikaiwa
Source: http://www.math.gatech.edu/~monteneg/Japan/japan.html

In January, 1998 one more duty was added to my studies, work. This consisted of teaching "English conversation" lessons for about 3 hours per evening. In case you are wondering, "English conversation" ("Eikaiwa" in Japanese) is meant to teach Japanese people to use their English in conversation. This is in contrast to the relentless memorization which they were forced to do for 6 or 7 years in school, resulting in lots of people who know lots of vocabulary but can't say much more than "Hi, my name is ". Actually, this is a rather monotonous and easy job. There are 1 to 3 students per teacher and the teacher has a text of exercises pertaining to some particular topic (airline flights, hotel reservations, shopping, etc.). We then spend 45 minutes in which (1) the teacher makes stories on these topics, (2) the students repeat the stories (to get used to speaking about the topic), (3) the teacher then asks the students questions about the stories, (4) the students ask the teacher questions about the story, and (5) both ask each other questions about real life experiences on the topic for the day. It may sound rather dull and useless for the students, but actually students advance quickly and it does seem to be somewhat effective.