The CD Player- An HRT’s Best Friend

The CD player is the HRT’s best friend in the English classroom. It is your resource for teaching, and learning: native pronunciation, rhythm and stress, vocabulary, anything and everything. Use it often! (end) Read more...

The Eigo Noto CD Is Too Fast!

Do you think the songs on the Eigo Noto CDs are too fast?! Try writing the words to the songs/chants on the blackboard first, and practicing them slowly, even repeating them word-by-word, before playing the CD version.
I will also be making some slower audio tracks for you to download--check back another time. (end) Read more...

Lesson Plan Patterns

Having a set routine to your English classes helps you prepare the lesson, and also empowers students by giving them a routine to become familiar with.
Here are three patterns for lessons that are tried-and-true:

The Eigo Note text commonly uses this pattern for a lesson:

1. Greetings & Warm-up
2. Introduction
3. Expansion
4. Practice
5. Wrap-up & Farewells

My own pattern for teaching a lesson:

1. Greetings
2. Warm-up/Review and/or Recycle/Conversation Skills Training
3. Teaching/Introduction
4. Practice
5. Accuracy Testing
6. Production
7. Wrap-up/Closing

My friend Michael Sullivan offers the following lesson pattern:

1. Greetings
2. Review (repeat activity from last class for a short time)
3. Introduce new language
4. Main Activity
5. Wrap-up/Good-bye

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How to Introduce New Language

We all learn language as babies first by listening. This is the natural way to introduce new material to your students, too. Do your best to provide some context to give extra clues to what the language might mean. Some of the activities below do that very well-

• Storyboards/かみしばい- Read a story.
• Model the language with another teacher or student in a skit or dialogue.
• Play a short video.
• Songs- Listen to, then sing a song.
• Listen & Repeat- write these patterns on the blackboard, and play Listen & Repeat CROSSFIRE. Say each pattern in order, then the second time through, change one part: I play tennis. I play tennis, too. I don’t play tennis. Do you play tennis? Yes, I do. No, I don’t.
• Listen and Respond- Students respond by pointing to a picture, touching an object, raising hands or standing, etc., to indicate comprehension.
• Translation- Ask all students to tell the meaning in Japanese, then ask for single volunteers to translate
• Don’t have a teaching partner to do dialogues with? Try using a pair of puppets. Or wear different hats to represent different characters.

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Maintaining Young Learners’ Attention

Varying the tempo in my lessons for young learners has helped me more than anything else to maintain their involvement in a long lesson. It might be alternating fast-and-slow, or LOUD-and-quiet, sitting-and-STANDING, with clapping and without clapping. (end) Read more...

Maintaining Young Learners’ Attention

Varying the tempo within my lessons for young learners has helped me to more than anything else to maintain their involvement. (end) Read more...