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 )