Tag: Teaching English (ESL)

Yesterday I went with Ai, the J-List employee who keeps our site well stocked with bento boxes, traditional products from ...

There are many differences between Japan and the U.S., and some of them can be downright hard to reconcile. When ...

The Japanese, of course, spend a lot of energy learning English, with most taking six years of the language, or ...

The Japanese language has a lot of unique features, like its syllable-based pronunciation system in which ka, ki, ku, ke ...

Everyone knows that adding 'y' to the end of a noun can turn it into an adjective, like silky, messy, ...

My Japanese wife and I have given a special gift to our children, making sure they grew up bilingual in ...

When I was at Narita last week I went into a bookshop to browse for Japan-related books we might want ...

Exam season is nearing for my children, and they both spent several hours this weekend studying for the tests that ...

October is an auspicious month here at J-List. It's our birthday, and a special one this year since it's our ...

September means the start of university, and I've got quite a few readers in my Twitter feed who have just ...

I'd like to say thanks to the nation of Australia for taking good care of my daughter. She spent two ...

Like Turkish, Basque and Korean, the Japanese language is an "agglutinative" language, which just means that a lot of information ...

The other day I reached for some saltine crackers and found myself smirking at the name on the package: "Mornin' ...

One of the great mysteries of learning a non-Western language like Japanese is when your brain actually starts "reading" it ...

The idea that America is more "free" than Japan is one I've encountered quite often during my ESL teaching days. ...

One of the holy grails of speaking a foreign language is thinking in your target language, a process that seems ...

One of the good things about teaching ESL in Japan was learning my own language. Languages are based on rules ...

Well, I've made the hop from the U.S. over to Japan, a journey of about 24 hours from door to ...

There are many approaches to studying a foreign language, including the Communicative Method, stressing verbal communication with other students, or ...

The Japanese Ministry of Education has announced a new initiative designed to improve English ability by requiring English lessons to ...

First of all, the J-List and JBOX.com websites were down for a portion of Saturday due to a site issue ...

My daughter's mid-term tests are coming up soon, so she's been studying to prepare for them. Although she can recite ...

Running a business in Japan naturally means I have to interview Japanese job applicants who want to work for J-List, ...

"How are you?" If you've ever taught English as a Second Language in Japan then you know the correct answer ...