Monthly Update October 2024
Welcome to our school monthly update for October 2024. Our school offers lessons for elementary school-aged children and above. We also provide daily conversation and business English classes for adults. Customized and short-term lessons are also available for families moving abroad, business presentations, or students studying for English proficiency exams such as the Eiken, TOEFL, DuoLingo, and IELTS tests. Our classes are held at our school location in Yoga Setagaya, Tokyo. Online lessons via Zoom are also available.
Our monthly blog update includes information about our group and private lessons for our children and adult students.
Please get in touch with us at [email protected] if you are interested in a trial lesson or have any questions about our school.
Lessons for Children
October passed by very quickly. It was pretty warm in the Tokyo area, so it did not feel like fall. As a youth growing up in the NorthEast region of the United States, October was when the weather started to turn chilly, and sweaters and jackets came out. This year, however, T-shirts and shorts were still worn throughout most of the month.
Our beginning-level students are more than halfway through their textbooks, and some classes have completed the beginning-level reading/writing assignments. Writing assignments for beginner-level students is a great way to reinforce letter and word recognition and help students compose short sentences. Many beginner students come to our school as first-grade students in elementary school. At this stage, many students need help writing in their own language and in a foreign language.
For this reason, we start students with a textbook that teaches straight lines, curve lines, loops, etc. This way, students become familiar with the strokes needed to write English letters. Once the students master this process, we provide workbooks for practicing writing the alphabet letters and simple two- to three-letter words.
Our intermediate and advanced classes are reading advanced materials such as the Magic Treehouse book series. These books contain a lot of adventure and sibling interaction that many students can relate to. Many of these students have taken the Eiken exam and have passed levels 4, 3, and Pre-2. For this reason, we challenge students and work on their critical thinking skills as they read.
For a Halloween event this year, we played small games in the lesson, and students decorated a small pumpkin like a jack-o-lantern. We did not pass out knives for carving the pumpkins, but students decorated their pumpkins with magic markers. Many of the designs were very creative.
During the month, we have been working with a junior high school student as he prepares for the 2nd part of the Eiken Pre-2 exam. This part of the exam focuses on reading and speaking. The test is short, about ten minutes, but many students get stuck on the last two questions. These questions ask the students about their opinion on various topics such as, “Do you think elementary school students should use smartphones?”, “Do you think it is better to study abroad to learn English?” etc…
Practicing giving opinions and providing reasons to support them is an excellent skill, but many students do not learn how to do this in school. Learning English develops communication skills and real-life skills that are important to a student’s development.
In addition to our regular students, we have welcomed back a student who moved to Saitama for high school. We have taught this student since he was a first- or second-year elementary school student, and it was wonderful to reconnect. This student was also studying for the Eiken speaking test but for the Level 2 exam. For five online Zoom lessons, we practiced questions from past exams and worked on how to provide an opinion and reason.
We are happy to report that both students passed their speaking tests!
Lessons for Adults
As a small school, we can only offer a few adult lessons throughout the day. However, we can help adults interested in daily conversation, business English, or pre-graduate school preparation.
In our business English class, we use materials from the Business English Pod. The free service allows students to listen to various business scenarios, such as giving presentations, answering the telephone, negotiating, etc. As we have a premium subscription, we also provide PDF files to students so they can review the dialog and learn many new business English words.
Summary
Our enrollment is ongoing, and we welcome new students throughout the year. We do our best to assign students to the appropriate level.
We encourage anyone interested in our school to contact us for a free trial lesson. Online lessons are available as well for students regardless of location.
Please read our FAQ page for detailed information about what types of students do well in our class. Unlike a typical English conversation school, our school does not focus on an “English is fun” approach to learning and does not typically include games in our learning process.
Our goal is to develop global citizens, students who are interested in the world around them and who can express themselves. We have been teaching English for over ten years and have many happy students; quite a few have studied with us for several years. However, not all students fit our approach. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions.
As always, please get in touch with us directly for information about our school: [email protected]
