Teaching English

So part of the program I am in is helping teach English lessons. I've helped a couple times now so I thought I could share some of my experiences.

Group English lessons are held in the classroom on the bottom floor of the guest house I'm staying at. They are led by the girl who has been here the longest and the rest of us help. Because I'm new the lessons usually start with me introducing myself or the students asking me questions. I'm not entirely sure how much the kids understand but there was a lesson with two girls where I think they understood what I was saying pretty well. They seemed to enjoy asking the question "do you have a boyfriend?" 😆

The main part of our lesson is playing English games, which means games that involve speaking or listening to English. For example, we have played pictionary, hangman, and werewolves/mafia. Rules were explained in Japanese since the kids understood that better and us English speaking kids already know the rules. The kids seem to have a lot of fun and chat with each other in Japanese a lot which means I couldn't exactly understand them. I could understand the girl leading the game, though. Well, not entirely but enough to know what was happening. One of the hilarious things is that the girl leading the lessons would say rude things or swear a lot and the kids had no idea so all us English speakers were laughing and the kids had no idea why. Actually, one of the girls in the group of two understood. Can't get away with as much with those two.

Yesterday I was taken to a company to speak to an engineer who is being sent abroad next year. I think he's being sent to New Zealand, but I'm not entirely sure. Basically I just had to talk to him using simple English. I speak way less Japanese than pretty much anyone else in the program so I was probably picked because my lack of Japanese would force him to speak English. He started out saying he couldn't speak English but his pronunciation and vocabulary was actually quite good. We didn't talk about the meaning of life or anything but it was a fun conversation in my opinion. Talked about the weather and driving mostly and I explained the meanings of the words couple and few. Hopefully my speaking to him was helpful.