Hello everyone!

I just uploaded a set of slides on SlideShare.

http://www.slideshare.net/MamoruTakahashi

You'll find the questions I used to promote extensive reading in my class. It is mostly written in Japanese. It took the whole last semester to ask these questions. The most time-consuming part was that I had to write a comment on the students' answers, but that was also fun.

How did I ask questions to students every week? How did I collect the answers?
Good question. I used the News Forum function of our Moodle. I asked a couple of questions on every Tuesday morning and wrote my feedback in the afternoon.

Moodle is a free CMS (course management system). Once it is installed in the server of your school, you can use it as if you're using Facebook or Twitter. You can easily use it. I'm not exaggerating.

If you are interested in ER (Extensive Reading) and you'd like to stimulate your students with questions, you can use my questions. These questions mostly come from mostly Donalyn Miller's Reading in the Wild and Teri Lesene's Naked Reading.

All right. Happy Obon!

Bobby

Hello everybody. Long time, no see!

Hi!

It's been quite a while since I wrote my message to you in this blog last time. Lots of things happened during the past three years since the Great Earthquake. Well, I'm still alive and actively living in the middle of nowhere. Some of you might be studying in Honolulu now.....

One thing I wanted to let you know today is about Twitter. I started tweeting a few years ago and now tweeting became a part of my life. I have some JALT friends who are also tweeters and also got acquainted with many other writers, teachers, and other sorts of professional people all over the world.

So, this is my invitation to Twitter.  I would appreciate it if you could make your own Twitter account and follow me (@BobbyTakahashi1). If you already have a Twitter account, you just have to find me and follow me. Then I will follow you back, so we'll be able to communicate more frequently. Let's start communicating in English again!

Best regards,

Bobby

earthquake

I hope those who are living near Tokyo are OK. It looks like the quake hit Kanto areas harder than my area. Phew... it was a big and long earthquake. It is still continuously shaking a little here in Akita. We didn't have any damages in my house, but we had no light and no heating over a night. Oh, we couldn't use our cellphone either. Our electric power comes from our closest heat power plant, so they resumed the work a few hours ago after an inspection. (That's why I am writing now.) But the other areas, especially those places that were hit hard, have atomic power plants, so they have no electricity and no water.

Teacher's Time Out -- Bobby's version

This is Bobby writing. Long time no see! I am going to tell you about a simple technique that is called “Teacher’s Time Out”. This idea was originally written by Valerie Benson in New Ways in Teaching Reading (this is one of the New Ways in TESOL series).

How do you “teach” vocabulary? Isn’t it frustrating when some students know the meaning of the words in the text and others don’t. Until last year, I often told my students to draw lines under the difficult words with pencils. Then I walked around my classroom with a pen and a notebook to write down the words. After that, I came back to the blackboard and explained the meaning of them.

Benson’s idea was eureka! to me this year. I noticed that I could automate the process by asking students to go to the blackboard to write the words. Before letting them go to the blackboard, I took time for them to ask the meaning to the other members of their group. By doing this, students benefitted by teaching each other, and at the same time I was able to specify the words they didn’t know.

Oh well, the result is so far so good. When I explained the meaning, I could choose Japanese equivalent of the unknown words or its English definition.

Sad news

Dear friends,

I'm sorry to post this very, very sad news. The following is the quote from Judy's email to me today. I don't want to believe the news, but this kind of news can't be a joke.

"Last week we were shocked to hear the news that Terri Menacker has passed away. We don't have a lot of information as to what happened--we only know that she was found in her home and the death is under investigation. I dislike being the bearer of this shocking news, but I thought you would want to know. Please feel free to pass this new along to other EFL teacher seminar participants. I know you all appreciated her tremendously and learned a lot from her. This is a great loss to the ESL community in Hawaii."

With profound sorrow,

Bobby

Wassup

Hello everyone,

When I was looking for a funny commercial about Japanese canned coffee, I found a series of Bud commercial on YouTube. How do you like them?

Suntory Boss CM
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hKeLrUC5KWg

Bud CM
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=UDTZCgsZGeA&feature=related

Enjoy!

Bobby

Professional Development Seminar 2008

Hello friends,

Sorry for posting no messages for ages, but I can clearly recall everyone still now. Actually, I had a chance to talk with SuLing for four hours on an afternoon and talked about many of you. She remembers all the participant's name, face, what she/he did. She has awesome memory.

I wanted to let you know what happened in the seminar this year. The main event, I think, was going to the cave in the mountain. (Thank you, Terry, for driving the huge van.) We could go inside the tunnel which is the source of water in Hawaii. The activities were placed around the central theme of water. Those who couldn't come to Hawaii this year missed the chance of experiencing the exiting tour.

I hope you all keep having wonderful time in teaching and learning English. Oh, by the way, if you have time on the weekend of November 1-3, come to National Olympics Memorial Youth Center in Yoyogi, Tokyo. You can enjoy JALT 2008. http://www.jalt.org/conference

OK. Take care. Don't catch cold. Aloha.

Bobby