I did not know what to expect from this lesson. I thought initially it was an actual lesson in a Japanese high school classroom, which is honestly a personal dream of mine. I want to teach English in Japan, and would like to instruct high school level students, as I am considering a career in high school level teaching.

However, despite it being a bit removed from what I am interested in, I was impressed by many of this teacher’s ideas for high school level students in how to learn English as a second language. My favoured idea of his was to “learn to think in English”. In my own experience, learning a second language does produce thoughts in that language eventually, but to actually pursue this deliberately is something that has not actually occurred to me. It is really rather simple.

He also has the class answer questions about learning English: “Is there a best way to learn English?” is one. To my surprise, the students answered yes. The teacher though suggested they read a story, which had in its narratives many different methods of learning English.

As he was a university teacher who was on the high school campus to explain to students about what is expected of students in preparing for university entrance exams, he also provide three methods for preparing for such. One I have already listed: learn to think in English. His other two methods were “produce the language” and “read everything”.

Produce the language. Such an interesting manner of learning what to prepare for. It is not enough to memorize a language, but a student of it needs to learn to produce it. This is my other main takeaway and it’s something that I will need to begin considering: how to teach my students how to produce the English language, or not merely memorize it.