Teaching English with an iPad

Just published an article for gaijinpot detailing ways to teach English with an iPad. As Phat English is now available as an ebook and all the songs are on iTunes, it was also a great chance to discuss some of the different ways that Phat Egnlish can be used to teach as well. Thus far it`s been fairly well received. Feel free to check it out! Here's the link:

http://injapan.gaijinpot.com/2012/01/02/how-to-teach-english-with-an-ipad/

Gaijinpot Article

Just published an article for Gaijinpot.com (a website for foreigners living in Japan) putting forth a systematic methodology for how to teach English pronunciation. Naturally, as Phat English is the best way out there to do it, I had to include links to a few different exercises that teachers can get for free in there as well. Here's the link! Check it out! http://injapan.gaijinpot.com/2011/04/04/how-to-teach-english-pronunciation/#

Phat English on iTunes!

Phat English Listening CD1 has finally been accepted to be sold on iTunes. With that, and the fact that the Ebook is for sale as a digital copy through lulu, anyone can now have instant access to all that Phat English has to offer anywhere in the world.

This is particularly exciting for me as there has always been a demand for it as a product in Japan, but with the combined cost and delivery time associated with international shipping, getting it to customers has always been challenging.

Now Phat is ready to move forward full steam in Japan, and I look forward to seeing how well it can do.

Hall's blog

The aforementioned article on Phat in Hall Houston's blog is now up. Here is the link for anyone who cares to check it out:

http://hallhouston.blogspot.com/2010/05/first-guest-post-chuck-johnson-author.html

On Self-Publishing...

Recently, I was contacted by Hall Houston, a University EFL teacher in Taiwan, and the author of Provoking Thought about doing a contribution to his blog about my experiences developing and self-publishing Phat English. I'm one of several authors who will be featured in the article, and he is writing it to contrast self-publishing with going through a major publisher, and the respective pros and cons of each. I'm also happy that he is giving me an opportunity to speak about Phat and hopefully continue to introduce it to people who haven't had a chance to see it and/or hear about it yet. Although I've already sent him my contribution, the it will be coming out sometime next month, and I'm really looking forward to reading the whole thing (in particular the experiences of other authors) then.

Phat Private

Was recently contacted about being the private instructor of a hip-hop dancer who is looking for a teacher to work with him privately. Was supposed to meet with him today, but he was unable to make it, so hopefully, I can meet with him soon. As he will be my 4th Phat English private student, and I've been actually teaching with it for 5 years anyway, I don't expect too many suprises when we are actually 'in the classroom'. At the same time however, as I've got all the tracks in both WAV and MP3 formats now, provided he has an MP3 player, he will be the first person to actually be able to carry them with him as he goes, and I'm interested to see if he dedicates time to learning and practicing the songs on his own, and if so, how that will affect his ability to integrate the pronunciation patterns he is learning from them into his usual speech.

This usually seems to take more time than students utilizing them on their own without prompts as they are singing the songs.

The MP3s are also nice because I can simply put it on my Ipod as well, so when I teach with it, we can practice the full listening/rapping exercises wherever we choose without necessarily making too much noise or having to bother anyone.

In general, working with him should be a fun and interesting experience, and as with each and every student, hopefully watching how he deals with Phat will give me insights into tweeking it into something even better.

Phat at Toin University

At present, I am working as an accredited English convesation instructor at Toin University Yokohama. Recently, I was given the green light to introduce Phat English as a part of their "English Challenge" (extra-curricular practice) curriculum.

Thus far, they seem to be enjoying it, and are getting it faster than I thought they would. This is encouraging because they are about as low as the students I worked with at ESP and Yokohama Design Gakuen, but without coming from the dance and vocal' majors as those students were.

These guys (and I do mean guys- there's very few women in the program I am working in), are almost exclusively athletes however, and insomuch as I've personally experienced, most high level athletes aren't exactly musically inclined. As such, I figure that if they can do it, and enjoy it, then anyone can. It's also interesting because I am doing the program with a myriad of other teachers from other backgrounds and it will be interesting to see how they interpret and use the text, exercises, and CD as well.