Learning English

Since snowmobiling has wrapped up Shawn has been keeping busy by teaching English a couple times a week. He was reluctant at first, but teaching english is one of the only jobs that pays decently, has flexible hours and can be held by those of us with limited Japanese. A bit of a stretch initially for a guy who doesn't love the classroom setting and prefers to spend his time with tools rather than books. He has been getting help from a friend who has been teaching here for 10 years. Our friend even shared access to his online teaching resources, check out the link on the right (Anthony's english site) or click here to check it out.

One of the classes he teaches is a drop-in type group at the university. They had a party on Saturday night and invited us to join them. The food was delicious and afterwards we went for drinks with a few of the students. They are a really interesting group of people and it was fun to hear their backgrounds Here is a photo of Shawn addressing his students after the dinner and a shot of the group.



He is teaching everyone from kids to retired folks and has now hit a stride and enjoys it. It is strange how hard it is to teach english when you are a native speaker. We really don't understand grammar rules very fully, and have a hard time answering questions about why this is plural in this case and singular in another. In a lot of ways we learn the language along with the students. Who knew we would come to Japan and end up learing english!