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.

Phat at the BEA.

Recently, I was contacted by lulu, the self-publishing company through which I produce Phat, and they told me that Phat English was one of the books that they wanted to display on their bahalf at the BEA. (Book Expo America). As the BEA is pretty much, the biggest book show in North America, and lulu will have a large booth in a great location (right by the door) I was pretty excited about the prospect. It just goes to show just how far Phat has really come. I'm curious to see how it will be received, and given what I've heard so far, am expecting good things.