My profile for my university job states 'In the communication age, knowledge is power. Find your power.' It didn't take me too long to realise that this is actually complete rubbish. If the greatest ideas in the world were stuck in the mind of someone without the ability to communicate them, then they're completely useless. …

Knowledge that knowledge is not power is power. Read More »

Back about 10 years ago in an interview applying for a MEXT scholarship I was asked what in my opinion was the biggest difference between NZ and Japan. My answer now is the role of women in society, however that Japan is extremely conservative and NZ extremely progressive would be a close second. When I …

The one constant thing in life is change. Read More »

I heard of a challenge from Seth Godin to write everyday. I have learned the importance of effective communication by being a teacher, translator, and interpreter over the years, and I'm going to write this blog, even if it's crap, everyday for as long as I can. My reasoning is purely selfish, to be a …

Better communication, better results. Read More »

I was a little taken aback the other day in one of my junior high school English classes because the teacher had told the students to work alone on their self-introductions just because he wanted them to finish quickly. Actually I was angry because I said that they should ask each other before they ask …

Languages shouldn’t be learnt alone Read More »

When you are put in charge of teaching English to young children it can often be quite challenging. They need to be constantly entertained and engaged, which means either one really fun task, or lots of little ones are necessary. Any activity that is not the least bit fun will have the children off-task and not learning, so …

More easy activities for the low-level language classroom Read More »

Quite often in the conventional language classroom listening "practice" involves listening to something and writing down answers to questions. In real life when someone is talking to you, you don't sit there and write down what they are saying, you respond by showing in some way or another that you have understood what they have said …

How to get proper listening practice in Read More »

The research may not be very conclusive but it is conclusive on one thing: there is not one single way to learn a language. Of course this comes down to terminology; like what does true success in language learning mean? Does it mean simply being able to be understood, or is it more than that, i.e. …

What you need to learn a second language Part 1 Read More »