Here are a few notes and links to help you with your study.

Highlights

  1. A PDF reader (for iPhone and for Android).
  2. Socrative (for iPhone and for Android).
  3. Quizlet (for iPhone and for Android).

Grading

You will be graded on a range of criteria: homework, reading, presentations and general class work. For a more detailed explanation of the criteria used, please look at this PDF.

Classroom Resources

You should all have the correct textbook, a dictionary and your file. An important part of studying - and teaching - is good note-taking and keeping track of your notes. Make sure you have your Student Progress Chart kept up-to-date. You should also be filling out your Reader Assessment Chart. You should also be aware of the course rules (and always have a copy in your folder).
I will be adding PDFs to this page, either handouts from classes, or extra material that may help you with your study. Please download and use as you like.

For those students with bad handwriting, here are some notes and practice sheets. If you want help with pronunciation, these notes may help you with sounds many Japanese speakers find difficult.

Useful advice, links and apps

You should be studying English all the time. The more you surround yourself with English, the better. You should be listening to podcasts, watching movies and reading every chance you get.
There are many websites that can help you with English. A quick google search will turn up with many sites that have free grammar and language practice exercises. Your online homework can be found here.

KNOW YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS

You need to know your university email address as I will be sending you homework links and reports. 

Your university email address is your student number followed by @kyoei.ac.jp.
For example:  [email protected]
​You can access your email through the university website (https://webmail.kyoei.ac.jp), or you can add it to your phone and get it directly. To do that, you need to follow a few steps:

For iPhone:
  1. open Settings (設定）
  2. open Passwords & Accounts (パスワードとアカウント）
  3. choose New Account (アカウントを追加）
  4. choose the bottom option, Other (その他）
  5. choose the first option, Add Mail Account (メールアカウントを追加
  6. type in your name, your student number followed by @kyoei.ac.jp, then the password given to you by the university, then give the account a name (for example, Kyoei)
  7. next, at the top, make sure you choose POP (NOT IMAP)
  8. in 受信メールサーバ, the ホスト名 is webmail.kyoei.ac.jp
  9. the ユーザ名 is your student number
  10. the password is the same as before
  11. in 送信メールサーバ, enter the same information
  12. Finally, click Save (保存) and all should be well! 

If you have problems, first try again and make sure you have spelt everything correctly. Make sure you chose the POP account. If you are still having problems, come and see me.
​
If you have an Android phone, please come and see me.

Podcasts

There are hundreds of podcasts for language learning (and for many other subjects). These can be found in the podcast store on an iPhone.

Movies

Movies on a DVD are a great way to practice your English. Choose a movie you enjoy (although try to avoid too much action and too much bad language!). Find a scene with a useful phrase that you want to learn, then watch it with Japanese subtitles, then English subtitles, and then no subtitles, until you can understand and remember. Then, when you get a chance, try it out with your friends and teachers!

Readers

The library has many readers at all different levels, and you should be going there two or three times a week. Read when ever you have a chance: on the train and bus, while you are eating, before you go to sleep, and any other free time you might have. Keep a record of your reading in the Assessment Sheet and write your rating for each book on your teacher's office door. For more information, go to the Readers page.

Apps

  • You will need to download an app to your phone called Socrative - Student. Here is the iPhone app and here is the Android app.
  • You will also need to download an app to your phone called Quizlet. Here is the iPhone app and here is the Android app. It is very useful for learning languages, but also for learning other subjects too.
  • There are many free Japanese-English dictionaries. Find one that is good for you. You should look for one that is easy to use with good definitions, example sentences, grammar explanations, links to related words, and if possible pronunciation.
  • Evernote is a very useful free note-taking app.
  • If you have an iPhone then you can download Pages, Numbers and Keynote for a fee. These are Apple's very powerful set of apps for writing documents, making spreadsheets and for making presentations. In my opinion, all are much better than Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There are also many other similar apps, some free, some you have to pay for.
  • If you prefer Microsoft apps, then the main Office apps are now free for iOS and for Android.
  • Google Drive provide an extremely good set of apps similar to Microsoft Office, is free, can be used online with any computer or phone, and also give you 50GB of cloud memory to use.
  • Podcast, a free app on iPhones, but there are many alternatives, for iPhones and for Androids. From there, you can find many different English language classes to listen to.
  • Scanning and OCR apps. Scanning apps will let you take photos of documents (or even the blackboard - but ask permission from your teacher first!), and then convert them to PDFs. These are much better for viewing text than a regular photo. You can also use these in OCR apps to convert the picture into a text document that you can then edit. There are many scanning and OCR apps, but the better ones you will have to pay for.