Thank
you for visiting ESL Japan. Let me tell you a bit about
the origin of "Teaching English in Japan: A Professional
Journey." It began when I was asked to write on ESL
in Japan for the English Education page of the Daily
Yomiuri. The column was called At the Chalkface
and I wrote about 50 pieces before I decided I'd said
what I wanted to say regarding the state of ESL in Japan
and my own professional development at that time. In response
to a steady demand for a compilation of columns, Sanyushya
Publishing, a well-known text book publisher agreed to
bring At the Chalkface out as a book. Here are
some samples. If you have any comments, please feel free
to send them to me. Thank you.
Preface
In writing At the Chalkface I felt I had to take
one of two approaches: either I talked frankly and honestly
about what happened in my professional life - sharing
my observations, my failures, my succsses and techniques
- or I would have had to take the "you should,"
"you ought," "you must" approach.
Writing about myself was, I believed, to be the more honest
way of holding up my end of the conversation. Speaking
for myself, I never trusted writers who wrote up their
"perfect" lesson plans, techniques etc. I'd
rather hear from someone who said "I tried X. Part
of it went OK, but part of it didn't. So tried changing
X this way and things got better/worse/stayed the same.
So based on what happened in my classroom, you might try
X and expect it to go something like I have described.
But don't bet on it."
From time to time I would shift my focus to the "big"
picture - jobs, the ELT (English Language Teaching) economy
in Japan, professionalism etc. Too much that is written
about Japan stresses the "glossy side" and one
of my goals was to give some balanced insight.
In writing each article, my intention was simple and direct:
I hoped readers would respond with either "I didn't
know that!" or "I never thought about this topic
in that way before." It is my sincere hope that out
meeting "at the chalkface" has resulted in your
joining the "conversation" about the practice
of ELT in Japan.
