|| You can also learn Japanese at my Twitter, Podcast, and Patreon.
1) Twitter: @shirokuropapajp (Grammar / Transcript)
2) Podcast: Search "Shiro Kuro Papa" in Spotify, Apple Podcast, etc. (for shadowing with featured sentences and listening questions in natural Japanese)
3) Patreon: patreon[dot]com/shirokuropapa (for Shadowing + transcript, grammar tips that you don't find in textbooks, JLPT reviews, Manga/anime/books Anki decks, 1-on-1 feedback, and much more!)
｜｜ BACKGROUND｜｜
I have over fifteen years of experience in teaching Japanese to all ages from middle school students to people around 65 years old.
I have about 15 students at the moment who I am teaching online because they live all over North America. I have taught students living in LA, Seattle, Vancouver (BC), Austin (TX), Houston, Wisconsin, Nashville, FL, NY, DC, VA, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Montréal and Toronto (ON). My longest student has been studying with me over 10 years now and most of other students have been with me for 3-6 years now.
As a Japanese instructor, I see myself to be somewhere between university professors and language school teachers. Although I do not teach in universities or language schools anymore, I still enjoy teaching as a private instructor and have been able to help many people improve their Japanese. I often write reference letters and recommendation letters for my students as well.
Compared to classroom settings you can find in schools, my lessons are more flexible but still easy to follow and well-structured. I tailor my lessons for each student depending on what they enjoy as well as what their weaknesses are or what they want to improve.
Generally, I use the same textbooks most universities in North Americana and Japanese language schools in Japan use for beginner and intermediate students and JLPT textbooks for intermediate and advanced students as guidelines. Most of them have been taking JLPT N4-N1 levels every year. My students passed all levels of JLPT.
｜｜WHAT YOU DO DURING MY LESSONS｜｜
・・・HOW I START EACH LESSON
My lessons are mostly conducted in English with a Japanese only session at the beginning of each lesson, even if it is a short time, just so you can experience how it is like to interact in Japanese. The ratio between Japanese and English spoken in each lesson varies as you improve your Japanese, so with more advanced students, we use a lot more Japanese, if not only Japanese.
Then we go over new vocabularies and grammar points introduced in the textbook and talk about the pronunciation/intonation as well as the usage of them. Often the translation in the textbooks is misleading, so this is where I come in and help you understand each word and grammar point properly.
・・・ OTHER ACTIVITIES WE OFTEN DO INCLUDES
- Translation and creating your own sentences to better understand grammar points and vocabularies in various contexts
- Reading practice with audio files by paying close attention to your intonation and pronunciation to improve your speaking and listening skills
- Reading your favorite manga, and watching anime, TV shows or any youtube videos you might want to watch (This is for students who are intermediate or higher)
... among many others.
・・・HOW WE TAKE NOTES
We will be using Google docs where I constantly write notes while talking to my students or explaining things, which my students can see in real-time by sharing the same file. Google docs is where you do all your homework each week and also find sentences we have worked on together during the lesson so you can easily review what you have learned in previous lessons within a single file.
・・・HOMEWORK
All my students get homework each week. (If you don’t do your homework, I will stop teaching you. haha) They not only work on some of the exercises in the textbook but also they write their own sentences using the new vocabulary list and grammar points. I also provide sample paragraphs and they write their own paragraphs based on the samples. On top that, for the same paragraph I often give the recording of it that I record myself, and my students are expected to practice reading it A LOT with the recording to learn the pronunciation, intonation and how each sentence flows, which is very important. All my students typically spend 4-8 weeks on the paragraph to "perfectionate" the pronunciation and intonation.
・・・EXTRACURRICULAR
Once you get solid basic knowledge of Japanese language, which is usually after you complete the first book, I use extra materials that I prepared myself. These materials help you understand how to use what you have learned better because you can see multiple grammar points combined within a single sentence that you do not find in the textbooks. While you still need to do those repetitive practices in the textbook, especially at the beginning, we go one step (or a few steps) further with these materials so that you can say a lot more things than what the textbook teaches you. This is the part all my students particularly find more interesting and satisfying to do. Many textbooks can only talk about the basic usage of each grammar point, but you can say a lot more by combining them.
・・・WHAT YOU GET OUT OF THIS
Speaking and listening are the hardest areas to improve for most of my students. For this, we do listening and repeating sessions while paying close attention to your pronunciation and intonation. These are very important and something you can improve with my lessons for sure. All my students who have worked with me noticed the difference between how they sound and how other Japanese learners in schools, etc. sound. This is another example of what is hard (or often impossible) to get in class settings.
Additionally, with intermediate and advanced students who are working on JLPT N3-N1, we do more of "careful reading" and "careful listening". Often my students miss the details of the article, even if they happen to be able to answer the questions correctly. Especially for N2 and N1, this is how you manage to improve your score, the last 5-10% on the test. In order to improve the reading comprehension we do literal translation so you understand everything written in the article in a specific context. This has helped a lot of advanced students to improve their reading comprehension skills.
・・・THE BOTTOM LINE
I simply enjoy the human interaction with students. Otherwise I wouldn't have lasted this long as a Japanese teacher. Also, if the student is willing to learn the language, it really motivates me to do more and better for them.
