After a spectacular discovery about one of my long-time student's experiences getting a chance to use the Japanese he has learned from me to date, I'm putting together a syllabus that I'll hand out to new students which will explain how lessons will progress.
Unfortunately, at almost the same time that I learned of my student Mathieu's experience, two other students who came together quit, citing my "disorganized" teaching style and complaining about "going around in circles."
As I'm learning, my teaching methods are not for everyone; I don't use textbooks per se and don't follow a structured lesson plan. Why? Basically because my students are a motley bunch and one size most definitely does NOT fit all; the ones who will benefit from my teaching style are people who are more willing to be free-form and accept unorthodox learning strategies.
Since I base my teaching methods on both how I taught English to Japanese students for five years in Japan, combined with how I myself learned Japanese while in Japan -- at no time did I take any lessons from Japanese teachers but rather tried to find methods to learn that most suited me -- I was not sure that the outcome of my teaching style would be good for new learners of Japanese or not.
Since what happened to Mathieu, I have become convinced that, while not for everyone, my teaching method will accelerate the learning of colloquial Japanese much, much faster than any traditional method that I'm aware of. Call it "Guerrilla Japanese" -- call it what you want, but my "system," which I have been putting together on the fly up until now, is a very good one for certain students, a very bad one for others.
Allow me to explain.
After about five months of once-a-week lessons, Mathieu, who started off at a beginner level and had told me he had tried learning with both a native Japanese teacher and a non-native Japanese teacher in Montreal but had been dissatisfied with both, was suddenly confronted with a chance to use what he had learned from me in real life -- his first encounter with a Japanese person in the place where he works.
He told me that the 30-something woman and he began a conversation in Japanese and that her surprise gave way to amazement at his proficiency in her language, and she demanded to know what Japanese teacher he had learned his Japanese from, assuming naturally that he had learned from a native speaker. When he told her that he had learned his Japanese "from an American guy living in Montreal" she was flabbergasted and almost came close to calling him a liar.
Mathieu's words were "She was gob-smacked!" which is a strange British term meaning, basically, speechless.
Well, needless to say, I was thrilled to the core. All that time, all those lessons -- those seemingly free-form, "disorganized" lessons which had one couple profoundly unsatisfied, had paid off in spades with Mathieu.
I now know that I'm onto something, and it's something that no one else to my knowledge has ever tried. Trying to give my approach a name is difficult; "Teaching Japanese from the Inside-Out" is the best description I can come up with at the moment, but whatever it is, it worked spectacularly with Mathieu. He told me that this woman was so amazed at his natural speaking style that she insisted on meeting me to find out if what he had told her was true.
Well, that hasn't happened yet, but when it does, I will let you know.
Meanwhile, you can go fetch the PDF of the first entry in my "Syllabus" (called "section_1_.pdf") which deals with one of the most important decisions a new student has to make when starting Japanese lessons: whether or not to learn Japanese in Japanese, or to learn it in English.
When I have completed more of the sections I will eventually post the links in a sidebar.
Meanwhile, 明けましておめでとうございます -- "Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu" -- Happy New Year.
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