What are /r/teachinginjapan's favorite Products & Services?

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I had a lot of one-to-one kids lessons like this, back in the day. As you’re in an eikaiwa, I’m not sure how much freedom you have with the curriculum.

However, this card game has saved me more times than I care to admit. It is basically the same rules as UNO, but you get a question on each card to read out and the other player(s) answer. It can be played with 2 players too. It has 3 levels from easy English to more advanced questions. The kids seem to love it. And if they really get tired of reading, you can finish up the game without reading the questions just as normal UNO. For a quick game, you can use 5 (or less) cards instead of 7. It is a life saver.

It seems to be a big thing here. There are rules about when and how to pronounce "the" though I'm halfway through a bottle of whisky and I can't be arsed remembering them.

It basically boils down to one of those things that native speakers just "know" but non-native speakers have to learn. Kind of like word order of adjectives

I remember having a full-on argument with a parent about this very matter. For some reason, some song we used in the class had the incorrect "the" sound for the vowel sound. This mum was known as a bit of a pain in the arse and made a big deal about it. The two native speakers were looking at her like she was an alien and trying to convince her that in English, there are always exceptions, and also songs sometimes make grammar mistakes to make it sound better, but even then, she was probably right, but it wasn't a particularly important point.

Bitch was having none of it and proceeded to fucking complain for 30 minutes.

Was glad to leave that job behind.

Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's Jet Program

It’s an old book, and there are many PDFs available, but it highlights the difficulty of Japanese people working with foreigners, and foreigners working in Japan.

"There" is an adverb of place. The reason why it's good for students to know how to categorize these words is that once you learn the rule, you can correct this mistake for an entire category of words. So many of them have been taught "the word there includes the word to". Learning each of these words individually is really inefficient.

http://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/adverb/adverbs-place/

Some examples: there, here, north, outside, abroad, etc

Knowing that it is an adverb will also explain the following grammar:
I eat there a lot. (there is not a noun, so does not become the object for 'eat')

I love it there. ("it" is the object, which is meaningless but required with the transitive verb "love" and then followed by the adverb "there". Students will say "I love there.")

The people there are friendly. (adverbs follow nouns. Students will usually say "there's people")

As far as how to explain it to students, if they don't know what an adverb is, I explain that. Then I list up adverbs of place and explain how prepositions must be followed by nouns.

I realize not everyone will have access to iPads or computers in the classroom, but for those who do, JHS students go crazy for Kahoot. You can create simple online quizzes and everyone gets to choose an answer. Scores are based on speed and accuracy. It's pretty fun to see people climbing up the leader board as the game continues.

> If you're really curious, here is a link to one of the texts we use in discourse analysis. > https://www.academia.edu/10844622/FAIRCLOUGH_Discourse_and_Social_Change

Off topic: this would give me nightmares! I fought to understand Foucault & Derrida back in the early 80s during my MA (Speech Comm--Rhetoric & Communication Theory). Barthes was easier & actually interesting, but these guys are one reason I left and didn't continue with a phd. Post-structuralism...pfft!

Thankfully, they're only outlining Foucault to show how they want to do something different/better.

If you are into programming, I'd highly recommend using Scratch to create games for class for children. I create games for my students in my free time.

Japan started a new TV series with Jason Sensei about the program and may be relevant to your students.

scratch.mit.edu

https://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/

I like this one: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0521136202

It's corpus based and quite good. There is also and intermediate and advanced editions as well as an academic English one.

You are in luck! There's also a series called "English Vocabulary in Use":

https://www.amazon.co.jp/English-Vocabulary-Upper-Intermediate-Answers-Enhanced/dp/1316631745

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You're welcome. :)

What level are these students?

There is a game called "Love Letter" that I bought in the US a while ago and really enjoy. It is made for 1 to 4 people and requires reading the effects of cards but the rules are pretty straightforward otherwise. Easy to setup too.

Here is an Amazon Japan link for you: https://www.amazon.co.jp/ラブレター-Love-Letter-Boxed-カードゲーム/dp/B00J1JLT8I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1523802091&sr=8-2&keywords=love+letter+game

Good casual card game. Great artwork on the cards too!

Prices:

• "Personal" (one user): Free
• "Personal Pro" (one user): $4 per month (annual billing); $5 per month (monthly billing)
• "Team" (any number of users): $8 per month per user (annual billing); $10 per user (monthly billing)
• "Enterprise" (any number of users): price not listed

I presume the prices are in US dollars. If that is the case, to use this with students as "team"/class members, it would cost about US$768 annually for a class/team with 7 students and a teacher. (For comparison, Moodle Cloud costs about US$112 for 50 users divided into as many classes/teams as one wants. I myself pay about US$528 for a Moodle setup, including domain names and server rental, for about 2,000 students.)

I watched two YouTube videos about Notion and could not make out that it does anything more than a Google Sheets or Excel spreadsheet would. Though I've not used them, I would think most electronic planners would pretty much do the same things.

The cheapest one I know of is https://www.groupon.com/deals/international-open-academy-787?fbclid=IwAR08aEfywBhiWxChAYIWXGA8yZBh5bDjy3cyz55wzR4rv394ut1LTppPsOU

It's popular with people teaching English online to Chinese students. I haven't taken it and believe the main reason people take it is to fulfill a requirement of Chinese government. That said it is probably about as good as most of the other TEFL certs and is fine if you are looking for a cheap course to put on your resume.

Don’t have any great advice as I haven’t experience it before but sending you positive vibes and a reminder that it all works out in the end, even if the outcome isn’t what you expected! But I’m interested in the area you’re discussing, if you can, please help fill in my questionnaire > https://forms.office.com/r/WxeX2jMf4L it’s about non native and native English teachers :)

I've done this myself to see how consistent I am: I corrected a bunch of papers after copying them and recorded the grades. About 5 years later, I got out the copies and regraded them after refamiliarizing myself with the criteria I'd given the students. I got an intra-rater reliability of about .78.

I've since begun collecting writing electronically and using the Corrections plugin for Moodle, which saves a bit of time. (Electronic collections has also enabled me to see that a significant number of students don't bother looking at the corrections anyway, which has led to my running through anonymized submissions during class in front of the entire class for the most common or worst mistakes.)

You're welcome mate, I hope it get's better for you. The fact that you are reflective enough to realise you are struggling and still have the will to try to overcome your situation in a global climate supercharged with tension puts you above many who have come before you in the past. Try to give yourself more credit during this time when shit piles on you.

Language can be a problem, yeah. The more you have the easier things will get in a lot of aspects. At the start I'd recommend learning a new phrase every so often and just trying it on people. Listening to their responses will give you a good idea as to how to have basic conversations. Make sure you learn how to say your trying/learning to practice speaking. If your only planning on staying a year focus entirely on spoken/listening. Google translate is pretty good most of the time, I use rikaikun in chrome to tell me the reading/meaning for kanji I don't already know. This website: https://www.deepl.com/translator is also really good at longer and more complex translations, just copy and paste text into it.

The things that helped me integrate the most when I first arrived was spending time after school with the kids at club activities and going to school events or weekend sports games for a few hours now and then. I'm not sure how that's all going now with covid and everything but something similar might work.

While some do wear a suit, many of the Japanese staff wear tracksuits or polo shirts and slacks, so probably nobody will give a shit if you did the same. Just come formally for a few days until you get a lay of the land, then dress as the others do. Shorts and jeans are a no go, and usually shirts would need a collar (no t-shirts).

Fwiw I often wear suit pants and just a shirt, or a knit jersey in winter, with no tie. I never need to iron anything since I'm careful about how I hang clothes to dry. I use something like this for the trousers and just hang from the ankles.

Have you tried looking into books available in the public domain? Project Gutenberg has an enormous amount of books freely available that are in the public domain. You can use any of them with no issue. When I worked in a junior high school I would take materials from PG, edit them to the target language level I needed, and print them out for students. It's a great resource for literature. Just make sure you do read over what you're going to hand out to students. I used it for children's stories (lots of short story collections on the site in English), but I did have to edit them because sometimes the language was a little old fashioned (easily done by a native English speaker, especially as most short stories were about a page long).

Try Inkscape for design and layout. It's a free and open source cross-platform vector graphics editor. It creates .SVG files that can be exported as .PNG files, is fairly painless to figure out, and did I mention it is free?

I use it almost every day, and have been for years.

https://inkscape.org/en/

Ziploc bags are a common one at my work. That way you can also label the bag to know what cards are in what. Or maybe those little plastic card boxes? Like these? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082X1PF3N/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_20CV6064K90K6BMMAYKE?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Thanks for your help guys - I've made an online version as a backup plan (which I think may now be my only plan). If you could share it to anyone you know I'd really really appreciate it. Thanks ever so much. http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2910972/Asian-Englishes

Hi, I've made an online version of the survey as a backup plan: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2910972/Asian-Englishes Thanks for the info. I found out about the timing when I got here (Tokyo), feel like a bit of an idiot! Thank you very much in advance for sharing the questionnaire!

https://thenounproject.com - A great resource for finding icons...for anything. Great for making worksheets or coloring sheets for little kids.

If you pay a monthly fee you can get an app which is super useful and download the pictures in different colors etc. Which is then great for flashcards etc.

I've been enjoying private Skribbl games. You can make private games and use your own vocabulary lists. If you're not comfortable using the site, it's pretty easy to just share your screens for pictionary.

I recommend this one, too. I went through it with my Japanese teacher before getting my current job, and still use it as reference from time to time.

https://10to8.com/pricing/

Depending on how many appointments you have per month, you could get this for FREE (up to 100 appointments).

It seems pretty easy to use. £20/month (annual) or £25/month (rolling) if you needed up to 300 appointments. It sounds like you run a relatively small school so hopefully 100 is enough and you can try it out without paying a penny.

it also says it syncs with: * Microsoft Outlook 365 * Microsoft Exchange * Google Calendar * Apple iCal

Before anyone asks: no I don't work for that company I just did a quick google and this one looked nice.

I was in a similar situation as you. This book was my life saver. You don't have to get this exact book. Just get a book that focuses on Keigo only. This particular one is very very thorough.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%9B%B3%E8%A7%A3-%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E5%9F%BA%E6%9C%AC-%E6%95%AC%E8%AA%9E%E3%83%BB%E8%A9%B1%E3%81%97%E6%96%B9%E5%A4%A7%E5%85%A8-%E8%AC%9B%E8%AB%87%E7%A4%BE%E3%81%AE%E5%AE%9F%E7%94%A8BOOK-%E5%B2%A9%E4%B8%...

https://www.amazon.co.jp/1日5分-教室でできる英語コグトレ-小学校5・6年生-宮口-幸治/dp/4491040974

There are a lot of simple short activities with the same thing that steadily build up in difficulty. I scanned all of them into PDF my special needs kids love doing them on the interactive touch screen TVs. After a few days of that you should have built up enough trust and interest to move on to other more challenging ideas.

Don’t get Old Spice. It’s sold here, but I’ve met multiple Japanese people who absolutely cannot stand it. Try deodorant sticks rather than sprays and shell out for something like this: https://www.amazon.co.jp/カルバンクライン-CKワン-デオドラントスティック-75ml-2-5oz/dp/B000VON764/ref=sr_1_3?__mk_ja_JP=カタカナ

You really want to talk to someone from roughly the same region as you. What works for one may not work for another.

We do, but they're pretty small. I imagine we could use something like this and store them in the hallway lockers though.

Because I'm a teacher (or the teacher) too, I found Myrick's Moodle 1.9 Testing and Assessment useful, but for someone setting up the system it wasn't particularly handy. I know enough to get myself by reasonably well, though I would very much like to be able to use Rasch models natively in Moodle and do not know how to do that (yet?).

If you will be handing accounts, too, I'll recommend not allowing students to set up their own accounts, as you'll get students creating multiple accounts by quitting whenever they encounter a problem or make a mistake with account creation. (For smaller elective classes I teach, I simply have students send a mail to me containing the necessary information: family name and given name in both kanji and a Western script, and an email address. In larger classes for which I receive rolls beforehand, I will make user names and passwords following a pattern I can tell the students about, then set the system to require a password change on the first login.)

For most other things, I usually just end up searching for references to problems, which usually leads me to various Linux pages or to Moodle.org. If I have urgent questions, I'll post them to both Moodle.org and to /r/moodle. The latter gets faster responses but the former more helpful ones.

If you're like me and just learning, I cannot recommend enough setting up at least one spare Moodle system on which you can try everything out before using it with your real system. Set up a couple of ersatz student accounts on the tryout site, too, so you can see how things will appear to students.

Try this one. Divided into chapters with a different aspect of nursing for each (meeting a new patient, symptoms, medicine, medical history, etc). Each chapter has vocab and brief dialogues. Prob ok for lower intermediate.

They're basically UNO cards but with English mixed in.

Just FYI, but you can get masa harina here on Amazon Japan (they even do next day delivery). I can't vouch for the taste/quality, but the reviews are great and a few are in English.

I brought this book from gakken on Amazon and have never looked back. It's a bit pricy but it comes with a cd so it's easy to use anywhere (especially of your school is a little technologically challenged). It can also automatically make minicards for karuta/card swap activities. It's annoying you can't modify text easily (it's just text on or off) but you can always print to PDF and find an online PDF editor to sort that out.

> You don’t get a job in education by winning the lottery. You get it because you’re qualified - either licensed from home or have done TESOL (at least a CELTA, DipTESOL, or university TESOL diploma), and have demonstrated proficiency in Japanese.

Exactly. I'd rather be a qualified TEFLer with a permanent position than a software dev that's got to keep hustling and retraining themselves when they turn 35, 45, 55, and so on.

Software devs should read this, too.

Do you think something like this is a scam? https://www.amazon.com/Simplebeam-Projector-Support-Theater-Outdoor/dp/B07DZSBTGS/ref=pd_day0_hl_229_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07DZSBTGS&pd_rd_r=361dbad9-005c-11e9-b34a-211282c114f8&pd_rd_w=ywGip&pd_rd_wg=D7Yzq&pf_rd_p=ad07871c-e646-4161-82c7-5ed0d4c85b07&pf_rd_r=ZM3J1KS35P7P3RBX51E3&psc=1&refRID=ZM3J1KS35P7P3RBX51E3 It's super cheap 100 dollars and shows a clear big picture with a family outside.

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Thanks