This was a freestyle lesson without any particular teaching point. A new student in Sapporo by the name of Tomoko had requested a lesson on Saturday, so I offered to be her conversation partner. We mostly talked about her music career (she is a piano teacher and knows many foreign people in Japan, so she is studying English in order to talk to them.)
Since this was a free lesson, I mostly made sure to introduce some expressions and vocabulary words she didn't already know (I want to give my clients the feeling that they are benefiting from my lesson). These included kicking it old school (I taught her that one after she told me she loved to play music by Bach on her piano) and between a rock and a hard place (which we used to describe the fate of her former NOVA teachers. When NOVA went bankrupt a lot of teachers were left adrift in Japan with no financial support.)
I observed that she has some difficulty with articles and her consonants are okay but lack the crispness of a native speaker.
After covering recent news in Japan, we talked about the microhome movement in the United States and discussed changing expectations for standards of living. I also talked about my own interest in living and working in Japan, this time in a stable position with a decent salary. I've had some experience with bad working conditions in the past (though not in my current position) and feel it's time for me to raise the bar for myself.
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