By the way...laughter

Now I have just read the previous articles which have been on the blog, and I am wondering why such a long sentences are necessary to just describe what I think now.  Originally the title of the article was 'Long time, no see', by which I was going to tell the reader how many of my previous students have got to face me again through the social network Face Book. The same goes for this blog. Writing in English is not hard for me, but writing in RIGHT English is very hard job. This is a very good chance to think in a different language, which is also a different world view.
Give me a little more time to continue to write about my experience(s) as a teacher.

Long time, no see...(5)

During the six years in A High School, no period was so exciting and enjoyable as the last 4 years. The chief House Master was my position, which gave me a very large field I could work in. Inside a given grade, Chief House Master was just like GOD! That position could give a teacher mighty power
for student guidance and counseling . It was almost up to him whether the school would expel a student who had done something wrong.
Five years had passed when an idea occurred to my mind that everything I did was something to make sure that I could play God. The idea terrified me a great deal. Students should never belong to me, because they are all God' image.
It was then when I made up my mind to change my job again. This time the reason is not to deepen my study but to be a real assistant for students' personality development.

Long time, no see...(4)

The second school I decided to work for was A Tokyo Metropolitan High School, which was my alma mater.  Actually it was not really.  the second year was the last year I spent my high school life there. With my father, who moved to Fukuoka for his business reason, my family also moved there. My family means I was one of them. A very ambiguous, round-about expression was used to describe the situation I was in, because at that time I was a member of the family and simultaneously I was not.  A Tokyo Metropolitan High School was the only one boarding school Tokyo had. School required all the students to stay in the dormitory. No exception was admitted. That is why it was called all-boarding high school. To leave the dormitory meant to leave school.
There the position waiting for me was that of a house-master. About half of the teachers held positions of house-master concurrently. I was one of them. In the daytime teaching English was my job, and at night the job of house-master remained. Once or twice in a week, night duty waited for me. Other teachers were always complaining about the night duty, because it was such a hard work that they could not sleep at all over night. Naughty boys ( and I am very sorry to say, I was one of them) were always causing troubles at night. Some boys ran away from the dormitory and others were bullying their friends secretly. The job itself seemed very interesting for me and as for me it was very enjoyable.
In the second year in the school, the principal and vice-principals appointed me as a chief of house-master.   It was the very beginning of my long and winding road to be a TEACHER of  capital letters.

(continued)

Long time, no see...(3)

At the end of the fifth year I worked as a teacher in S Gakuen High School, a slight but not neglectable idea occured to me. The school board thought very much of me, and might expect much of me, and gave me many positions in the school system. For example it was in the second year that the board appointed me as a TAN'NIN teacher. They also appointed me as a section chief of academic affairs. At that time I was only 27 years old. The work itself was not too much for me, but it took too much of my private TIME!  Almost all of my time was taken for the preparation for tomorrow' work and no time was left for my own study. That was the chief reason I decided to leave S Gakuen and tried to find a positon as a full-time teacher of other school.
It took almost 10 months to find a right place in A High School, which happned to be the school I graduated from more than 10 years before.

Long time, no see...(2)

During the time I spent at S Gakuen High School,  countless things came to me as should be learned. Since it was the first experience for me as a teacher, everything around me seemed to be anew and fresh, with an appearance being very attractive.  For example all the teachers are required to gather at teachers' room at eight fifteen for teachers assembly, during which time the principal gave us an guidline to be kept the week waiting for us.  During the assembly all the teachers were supposed to keep standing up at their desk, facing the principal, listening to his talk attentively. This occurred every day.  This system was a very traditional and old-time one, which had been discarded by many 'liberal schools'.

S Gakuen High School was a very traditional, right-wing high school, so it still had that kind of conservative system still then. What is more (worse, should I say?), after class when teachers left school for their home at four fifteen, the teachers were requested to go to the chairman's room and  say, "Good by. Thank you for today!".

Unbelievable as it was, but it was the reality. In the school, the vise-principal of the school was one of my seniors at Aoyama-Gakuin U, (he was a chairman of the department of academic affairs, then), so he ( Mr.S) taught me what I was supposed to know as a full-fledged teacher. The school experience was very enjoyable and fully-attractive for me. Even such an old-time system as teachers' assembly every morning came to me as one to learn as the full-time teacher. I enjoyed it very much.

People in that school including the chair of the board, the principal, and the vice-principal thought very much of me, because I was so energetic and powerful that I tried every thing I had in my mind. For example English Recitation contest was the first project I introduced. On every weekend  I took part in the Special Training for English Grammar for the students done in an in-service training center situating at somewhere in Chiba. The full five years I spent at the school was really exciting and fascinating.

Toward the end of the fifth year, however, a kind of doubt sometimes came to me. The doubt was a small, at first, but it gradually became larger and larger.  "Do I spend all of my life here?" As the doubt once stuck to my mind, it would never go away. Then I decided to change the place of my work.

(to be continued) 

Long time, no see...

Through my Facebook page, so many of my students have given me greetings, which is a very happy surprise! My carrier as an English teacher began as an instructor in a small private boys' high school situated in Chiyoda-ward, Tokyo. More than thirty years have passed since then. Thirty-two years is a long time, but it seems to be as short as a night' dream.

S Gakuen, which is my first school, has a very long history. The year I began working there happened to be the school's eighty-five anniversary since its foundation. Eighty five years ago the school was established by a very well-known English teacher, Saito Hidezaburo, as a private English school. At that time, just at the end of Meiji Period, English schools in Japan adopted a notorious way of language teaching, Grammar-Translation method.

G-T method has been a very powerful and effective way of reading for archaic languages or such a dead language as Latin, old English and so on, but it doesn't take us anywhere as of modern language learning.

Saito Hidezaburo, who was a typical self-made man, deplored the situation and made up his mind to establish his own school where students should be taught English on the RIGHT way by the right teacher through the right curriculum. That is why he gave the new school the name of  'Right way' school of English.

The opening of the school was welcomed by the public. So many statesmen and company executives were there in the opening ceremony of the school. The number of the students was so large that they could not find seats in the assigned classroom. Some of them attended class by sitting just outside the windows.

(to be continued )

Let me think about it...

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate of my first university, Aoyama-Gakuin, an professor who was teaching English-Japanese translation and interpretation gave us a shocking example on the difficulty of complete-cross-cultural understanding. The expression he used was the above asid  "Let me think about it"

A Japanese statesman who was in charge of the Japanese-American trade negotiation answered the question given to him by an newspaper reporter by using the expression, "Well, let me think about it." The question itself was a very clear-cut one requesting 'yes-no' answer. The statesman seemed to be reluctant to answer directly by 'yes-or-no' expression. Maybe that is way the phrase he used was, 'Let me think about it.'

Suppose what happens in our mind when we hear the phrase, 'Let me think about it'. I am pretty sure that almost all of us should have the impression that there should be something done to solve the problem we share. THIS causes a terrible misunderstanding.

In Japanese counterpart to the expression 'Let me think about it' is Kangae-sasete kudasai, which means, I am very sorry to say, 'I will do nothing about it.'

In translating or interpreting one language into the other, or one expression of a language into the other, we cannot pay too much attention to the connotation, nuance in other word, of the phrase and we should bear in our mind that we are supposed to translate or interpret the meaning, not a word, of the phrase.

I hope this will give you a suitable guide to your English study.

To begin with...

For a long time, this blog has been left untouched. Reason? Very simple. There has not been so much to say or to talk about.

The Japanese counterpart, Ishinjuku Now, has an enormous page vies app 35000. Reason? Simple again. So many articles, pictures and in particular much responses from the readers and the students in Ishinjuku Pre-Med school.

From now on, the Ishinjuku Blog's sister, English Forum, will enjoy so many Page views. I as the owner of the blog will do my best in order to make it flourish.