Author: sendaiben

Categories
Academy curriculum EFL eikaiwa JHS junior high school language courses materials publishing textbooks

The Fluency Course 2022

Is finally available on Amazon

I can’t believe this day is finally here. After six(?) years of writing, testing, re-writing, and figuring out how to publish and sell it without driving ourselves and our staff crazy, the B versions of all our textbooks are now available on Amazon in their final form.

Incredibly, we’ve made a lot of improvements to this latest (final?) version. We added a dictation activity to the first year books, made a simple change to the second year writing practice that should make a big difference to student results, and transformed the third year textbook.

I think our current users are going to be very pleasantly surprised, and new ones will just think the books were this good from the beginning 😉

We use the B books from October with our students, so we’ll have all the free supplementary stuff up on the Fluency Course website before then.

We’re also hoping to have the final versions of the A books up on Amazon/our site by the end of the summer, at which point I’m going to take my writing partner for a nice meal and we’re going to take a week or so off.

Would be really grateful for any help you could give us with promoting the course, telling people about it, leaving Amazon reviews, etc.

Please let me know if you have any questions! For people buying the course for their students, I would be happy to jump on a Zoom call to answer your questions or run you through how we use the books.

Categories
Admin goals personal

A Personal Update

It’s been a while

It’s been a while since I wrote about anything other than the Fluency Course, which now has its own website so please go there for updates 🙂

I’m doing okay. Certainly can’t complain. The Age of Covid has been pretty stressful but we weathered the storm better than many.

My wife’s school managed to get the same number of new students as the number of students that left/graduated. In addition, 50 of our elementary school students started junior high school and stayed at the school. As our JHS fees are much higher, this was a net increase in revenue for the school.

But the kindy and elementary school first year classes are looking (understandably) bare.

I wasn’t expecting to still be in this situation over a year into the pandemic, but we are so we just need to deal with it and hope that business will be better if things get a bit more resolved.

In the meantime we are spending a lot of time and money on upgrading the school, through lesson planning and materials development (mainly making Google slides for every single class), investing in classrooms and equipment (two large TVs in each classroom, upgraded internet and new routers in every room for the school, more readers for our ER program), and writing new materials (I’m finally getting started on the fluency phonics course I have been planning for over a decade).

On a personal level I have some new health issues (had surgery last month and am learning to walk properly again and trying to get back into fighting shape) and I’ll be transitioning to self-employment from next April! It’s a bit scary but I’m looking forward to it.

Categories
junior high school materials publishing textbooks

Fluency Course Blog

Like and subscribe

The Fluency Course site now has a blog, and the most recent post might be of interest.

Categories
Academy curriculum junior high school materials publishing textbooks

Fluency Course Website

Finally

We finally have a dedicated website for the Fluency Course materials. It’s very embrionic at the moment, but eventually will have digital samples from all the books, teacher guides, order forms, etc.

I will still post updates here and write about how we are running our Academy classes, etc. but for the latest information about the Fluency Course textbooks please go to our website.

Categories
curriculum junior high school language courses materials textbooks

Fluency Course 2021 ed.

It has evolved again

I am once again here to explain how our materials are evolving without being able to provide a firm date you will be able to order them, prices, or any other useful information.

The good news is that the latest evolution has made them much more user-friendly and more commercially viable.

The bad news is that we are unlikely to have them ready for people to order before March.

As we discussed in September last year (September? Really? Feels like several years ago), we were able to consolidate the speaking cards into worksheets and thus remove a hugely time-consuming and expensive constraint. After using the worksheets for several months, I can happily say they are just as good as the index cards were, and much more user-friendly.

However, five textbooks per year, plus a bunch of extra things that would need to be downloaded/printed, was not ideal.

So now we have managed to consolidate the components even more, and will end up with the following for each level:

Fluency Course 1 (aimed at JHS 1st years or 2nd years)

Textbook 1a (units 1-24) 230 pages
Textbook 1b (units 25-48) 230 pages
Workbook 1 (units 1-48) 100 pages

All components are incorporated into the textbook now.

Fluency Course 2 (aimed at JHS 2nd years or 3rd years)

Textbook 2a (units 1-24) 200+ pages
Textbook 2b (units 25-48) 200+ pages
Workbook 2 (units 1-48) 100 pages

All components are incorporated into the textbook now.

Fluency Course 3 (aimed at JHS 3rd years or high school students)

Textbook 3a (units 1-24) 200+ pages
Textbook 3b (units 25-48) 200+ pages

All components are incorporated into the textbook now.

I know it has been a long wait, but the materials have definitely improved in the latest iteration so hopefully it will be worth it. There should be samples available this year, and some small orders may be possible.