Hanamaki

This week I was "hand picked" to attend the Hanamaki English Teachers Conference. I'm not sure what hand picked means, but it certainly makes it sound like you have just been given the chance of a lifetime, not about to be stuck in a centre that is so good it is affectionately called "The Prison".

Luckily, my two roommates were really nice. Both were quite young and had only been teaching for a few years, so they still had lots of enthusiasm and really wanted to practice English and had loads of questions. This week is quite easy for the ALTs; we just have to make the JTEs talk English. But the JTEs have a big English test at the end of the week, and they have to speak a foreign language all the time, so I think it must be quite hard for them.

One of the best parts of the conference was the debate. We had to talk for 6 minutes per team about whether they should teach English in primary schools. It was very interesting and our team won when we spoke for and against. There were some really good points made and I was really impressed at how well the English teachers could think on the spot and come up with ideas in English.