英語学習にも役立つ、札幌の外国人英語教師の英語日記 札幌 英会話 [ステップアップ]

!0,000 hours?

2017年6月7日 (水)

In his 2008 book “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell says that “10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness.” Literally interpreted,… 続きを読む

TV

2017年6月5日 (月)

Recently, I have been watching a TV drama from about 5 years ago called House. It is one of my favorites, and I think that even though the setting is … 続きを読む

Breaking Bad Habits!

2017年5月26日 (金)

Everyone has some bad habits.  That’s normal.  I also have my own share of them.  My worst bad habit is staying up late at night.  I try to go to bed at a normal time, but every night I end up staying up much later.  The main reason for this is my smartphone!  Nowadays, we can watch so much media on our phones.  Before I never really watched Youtube much, but now I watch it almost every night.  I also watch Netflix on my phone, which is an application that allows us to watch a countless number of movies and dramas for a monthly fee.

Please help me to break this bad habit!  What should I do?  If you have any advice for me, please share your ideas.  And let me know what your bad habits are!

Another Golden Week Gone

2017年5月22日 (月)

Another GW has come and gone. This year, instead of shivering in Maruyama Koen beneath the trees, I went somewhere hot. Ever been to Palau? It’s south of Guam and east of the The Philippines, not far from the equator. It was there that I spent most of last week under the water.

Since I was a kid I’ve wanted to be a scuba diver. So last week I finally went and got my Open Water certification. It wasn’t cheap, but the training wasn’t difficult either. And the overall experience was completely worth the cost of the trip. Palau is a world of mostly green islands, white rock and sand and deep aquamarine blue water. The sun smacks exposed skin like an angry mother. Squalls roll in, drench everything and are gone twenty minutes later. The locals are  as friendly as can be. And the wildlife is gorgeous. As another diver put it, Palau is a tropical wilderness.

I’ll post pictures when I’ve got them sorted out. Hope your GW was great, as well.

Cheers!

Jon

What motivates you?

2017年5月18日 (木)

Hello everyone. The weather is getting hotter and Sapporo is slowly but surely becoming summer. Recently I have been training for a big race in Tokyo and it made me ask myself the question: What motivates you? I have always done sports basically because I love doing it however I`ve been wondering recently how I have managed to continue doing it for so long. The race in Tokyo actually demotivated me to train so perhaps it genuinely is out of love. Anyway, motivation is a very powerful tool. I think it can come from something physical (like me putting in an extra 10 minutes jogging each time at the gym) or something mental (like studying extra hard because I have a test soon). I am not sure if my motivation is selfish (that I want to be the strongest version of myself) or altruistic (that I want to motivate other women into male dominated sports) either way, I am happy to have it. A lot of my students have been studying English for a long time and I think it is awesome to continue to do something and see amazing improvements. I guess my next challenge is to put as mush effort into my Japanese study as I do into my sport training!