I first arrived in Japan from New Zealand in April, 1987 after graduating from Auckland University, New Zealand. What brought me to Japan in the beginning was an advertisement I saw, after just finishing my Bachelors of Arts degree. A language school in Japan, Language House, was looking for teachers to work in a small privately owned language school located in Takamatsu, Shikoku Island, a large island on the Inland Sea, and one of the four main islands of Japan. I worked there for a year from 1987-1988, mainly teaching in companies where the students were businessmen and engineers and office workers. The following year I worked at a then small Osaka school called NOVA, in the Higashi Umeda branch of the company. At that time, NOVA was still a small school, with only 5 branches in all of Osaka.
I left NOVA after working there eleven months and went to work for a small language school called ÔHAL Eikaiwa GakuinÕ for about two years. The school only had two or three teachers at one time, and we taught students of different ages and levels, including very young children. As a result of severe competition among language schools in Kansai, and due to rapid growth of large chain schools such as NOVA and Berlitz, and the bursting of the economic bubble, the conversation school closed its doors in 1992 due to financial difficulties. During the early 90's, I worked part time at several universities and junior colleges around Kansai, teaching in the evenings at companies such as Omron, Sharp and Kansai Electric Power company, and I enjoyed a stint teaching English to officers in the ÒJieitaiÓ, JapanÕs Self Defense Forces. In 1990, I began part-time study for the Masters of Education degree in TESOL at Temple University Japan, a branch campus of a well-known American university. I graduated from the Temple course in 1994 and continued working part-time at several universities until March 2000.
Between April 2000 and March 2004, I enjoyed four years as a full-time lecturer in the Engineering department at Kyoto Institute of Technology, a national university located in Matsugasaki, Kyoto. Teaching duties have included teaching an average of eight classes a week, conducting independent research, publishing articles for journals; and preparing students for the TOEIC. (I have also recently collaborated on a newly published text for low-level TOEIC students, providing proofreading and editorial assistance). My other areas of research interest include: the newly implemented Ministry of Education curriculum introduced into elementary schools to promote teaching communicative English to young learners; classroom research as well as private research on the professional development and training of Japanese and foreign teachers in elementary schools. I am currently enrolled in a post-graduate degree in Applied Linguistics at University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. This degree is being completed by distance, and involves the completion of a lengthy thesis. The expected completion time is some time in late 2007. From April 2004, I will be working as a full-time lecturer at Ryukoku University in Fukakusa, Kyoto. Expected duties include teaching TOEIC to first and second year students and reading classes, development of standardized proficiency tests for entering students, and conducting research activities. My research interests also include testing, classroom research and TOEIC. I am also actively involved in the professional teachers' organization The Japan Association of Language Teachers. Currently, in the Kyoto JALT chapter, I hold the position of Publicity Officer. This requires dealing with promoting local and national events within the JALT organization. Married 12 years, my wife and I are raising two bilingual children and own a Golden Retriever.
For any questions you may have about any aspect of living or working in Japan as a professional language teacher, finding jobs at Japanese universities, publishing articles, postgraduate degrees and non-traditional study etc, my current e-mail address is qfqnn101@ybb.ne.jp
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