Just finished a 4 day seminar for the Tokyo Fire Department. Much like last year, the program consisted of 14 hours of advanced language training for two groups of 6 firemen/women. This year however, as I had much more experience teaching with Phat, it was integrated much more thoroughly into the curriculum, and constituted about half of their training (the rest consisting of differences between English dialects such as GAm, AAVE and RP, oral and written presentation skills, and answering dealing with language / cultural issues that they may have to face while working with foreigners.)
Their Toeic stores ranged from about 630 to 990, so given the fact that most of my experience in teaching with Phat has been at relatively low levels, I also thought this would be a fascinating opportunity to compare and contrast the speed at which they could grasp the concepts.
As one would expect, they could grasp both the concept of the reductions and the logic of figuring out how they are applied considerably quicker than my students at ESP or at Yokohama Design Gakuen. Additionally, their reading and speaking fluency also made it considerably easier for them to grasp the songs as well, and while it might take 5 sessions to be able to perform the karaoke version of the song with my lower level students, they were able to get it in a single day.
Their Toeic stores ranged from about 630 to 990, so given the fact that most of my experience in teaching with Phat has been at relatively low levels, I also thought this would be a fascinating opportunity to compare and contrast the speed at which they could grasp the concepts.
As one would expect, they could grasp both the concept of the reductions and the logic of figuring out how they are applied considerably quicker than my students at ESP or at Yokohama Design Gakuen. Additionally, their reading and speaking fluency also made it considerably easier for them to grasp the songs as well, and while it might take 5 sessions to be able to perform the karaoke version of the song with my lower level students, they were able to get it in a single day.
At the same time however, even if they understand the concepts, applying the reductions to naturalize their speech still seems to be something that will require continual commitment.
Overall, it was a great experience though, and many students said that they are already looking forward to next year.
Overall, it was a great experience though, and many students said that they are already looking forward to next year.
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