A normal wokday for “The Chase”

So I’ve gotten a request for the next topic. Today I will be talking about a typical day of work. Before I do that, I it’s a good idea to gloss (and I really mean gloss) over why so many Japanese people want to learn English.

1. Cause they want to. Many Japanese people visit English countries, Hawaii is a big vacation spot and so is Austrailia. Some people want to continue learning. Some people want something to do. There are many reasons why they want to, but the important part is that many want to.

2. They have to for school. A certain amount of English is necessary for High School/College entrance exams. Also, many kids go abroad for some of high school or University.

3. They have to for that promotion. Some people need to know English to get a better job or a promotion.

When you put these all together you get a fair assessment of a cross-section of who attends English schools in Japan.

So what do I do in a day? Mostly one of three things:

A normal lesson. A normal lesson is on a certain topic. For lower level students, these lessons are normally about doing a task (ordering food, getting a hotel, directions, etc.). When you get to higher levels the tasks become more general and focus on conversation. A lesson is only 40 minutes, it goes by surprisingly quickly, so you can go from teaching a high level student to a low level student in 10 minutes (break-time). There is a maximum of four people per lesson so it is quite intimate.

A man-to-man lesson. A student can pay a little more money to have a private lesson for forty minutes. That’s the only difference between a man-to-man lesson and a regular lesson.

Voice. The voice room is a larger room that has a whiteboard and many chairs. The purpose of the voice room is to get everyone (1-8 people) talking in English. Most of the time it’s pretty easy, but sometimes it’s like squeezing water from a stone.

So a typical day consists of 7 regular/m2m lessons, a voice, and a lunchbreak. That’s a normal day.