How are you doing? We celebrated the 3rd anniversary of Hario English School last weekend by going bowling and eating out. It was a lot of fun. Congratulations to Taka for winning the bowling. I got 3 strikes so I’m pretty pleased with my score (I’m not great at ball sports generally). The restaurant was a chicken izakaya from Miyazaki prefecture so lots of the ingredients came from there. I enjoyed trying Miyazaki soft drinks and the food was really nice. I hope Hario has another successful year to celebrate next year.

We’re about half way through the speech homework now and we’re trying to help every student do their best, focusing on those students who are behind schedule. There are many reasons why those students might be struggling and we talked about ways to help them this Monday in our regular meeting. For some it might be an age or experience problem. We try to make the speeches the right length and level for each student based on their age and English ability but we don’t always get it perfect. We can adjust after the speeches go out as well by adding or removing lines and we’ve been doing that.

For some students, they aren’t learning their homework in the most effective way. Just listening to the CD and not doing any follow up work probably won’t be enough. Yuka wrote a blog detailing our advice on how to learn your speech. Please read that or ask any staff member in person and we’ll be happy to give detailed, step-by-step advice on what to do.

For some students it can be a motivation problem. A speech can be a daunting task. It takes a long time and a lot of effort before you eventually get good at it and getting over the hump requires persistence. I understand why students might lose motivation at that time. We’re reminding students of the benefits of learning a speech. These include: learning new vocabulary, public speaking skills, being able to talk about something you’re interested in, the achievement of starting and finishing a big task, improving your pronunciation and intonation, and gaining confidence in English, talking in front of people and just in general. So we understand the speech homework can be difficult at times and the reward isn’t immediate. However, it’s really worth doing and great opportunity to learn a bespoke, one-of-a-kind speech, made just for you. Most things worth doing are difficult at times and have no immediate reward.

So do your best and let us know how we can help.

Thanks for reading. See you the other side of Silver Week.

Kevin

みなさんこんにちは。先週末はHARIOの3周年記念をしてきました。ボーリングと食事に行き、とても楽しい時間を過ごすことができました。TAKA、ボーリング優勝おめでとう。私もストライクを3回取ることができましたのでとても満足しています。（基本的に球技は得意ではありません）