So I finally got to watch Eric teach an English class (that’s his job here in Japan). He works for the Tochigi YMCA. You may know the YMCA as a place to take swimming lessons or karate or go to summer camp. In the rest of the world the YMCA is one of the important places to learn English.
Yes, they have camp and sports and fitness and life skills classes too but it’s also known for language classes. The YMCA where he works is attached to a kindergarten school. His classes are sometimes in the mornings, mostly afternoons and often evenings. He teaches everybody from 4-year olds to adults (in separate classes, of course).
I got to meet his kindergarten kiddies. They were so excited to have a real-live American to practice on. It went kind of like this:
Me: Hello!
All of them: HELLO!!!!! (they yell a lot when they’re excited)
Me (to one child): What is your name?
Child: I’m Hanako. What is YOUR name?
Me: My name is Ann. Nice to meet you (I stick out my right hand)
Child: Nice to meet you (child sticks out her left hand—the one on the same side as the hand I offered)
Assistant teacher: whispers in Japanese “other hand”, child switches hands and we shake.
I had to do this, of course for all 6 kids several times.
Besides learning to introduce themselves they are learning color words, numbers, and animals. One thing they have to learn is how to end a word with a hard consonant. Many Japanese words or most borrowed English words end in a vowel sound. “Bus” is “bus-suh”, “ticket” is “chicket-uh”, “t-shirt” is “t-shaat-zuh”. Eric was teaching them to say “baTT” and go hard on the final T. He’d point to a drawing of a bat and say “What is this?” and they’d yell out “Bat-uh!” Eric would do his pretend-growl and make an X of his hands and say “not ‘Bat-uh’, ‘BaTT’!” and they’d yell “BATT!” Then he’d make them answer in a sentence “IT’S A BATT!”. Then he would run around the room high fiving each kid.
They are very cute and they know a lot. They can count at least to 10, know most of ther colors, and a lot of animals. They know Up, Down, and can do Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes. This song happens to be the only song I know in Japanese so I was highly amused.
I’m sorry I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the kids, but those are the rules.
It was great fun.
