AKI HAPPY

My weekly Happy Conversation lessons with Aki Sensei have become a really important part of my study routine. It’s funny how it works - on any given week I often feel like I’m struggling but I can look back to a few months ago and see how much progress I’ve made. Her infinite patience with my clumsy Japanese is much appreciated, and she always gives me enough time to work out what I want to say. She is clearly a gifted and experienced teacher and I’m really glad I found her on this site!

Aki-Sensei is an excellent teacher. She is attentive to the student and makes the lesson fun and engaging. She also made sure to communicate very well before the day of lesson to get to know a little about my daughter and made the lesson fun for her. Thank you so much! If you book with this teacher, you will not be disappointed! We will book again.

Today was the first lesson with Aki sensei, it was a great lesson! She prepared cards with different topics, such as: - If you could tell something to all people on the Earth, what it would be? - If you have a chance, would you go to the Mars? - What book made the biggest impression on you? I think its a great way to make lesson, every time we can pick different themes and discuss it. Your Japanese level will be improved much faster if you will speak on different themes everytime, in this way you can broad you vocabulary, and also you can heard what Sensei thinks about that, which is very interesting as we all have totally different backgrounds, and that that we can talk about anything online while studing language its just great. Thank you Aki-sensei, looking forward to the next lesson with you!

When I got stung by a bee yesterday, one of my first thoughts was that I would finally have a chance to practice using passive verb forms with Aki Sensei in our lesson today. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it was fun to use grammar I don’t often get to use and I really do look forward to our weekly lessons. Once we finished our informal conversation about bee stings, we moved on to her brand-new set of conversation starter questions which were fun and seemed really well-suited for my level. So, in summary, Aki Sensei’s lessons are so good that you won’t even mind getting stung by a bee :-)

Today was a bit more challenging than usual because I selected the 「難しい」questions, but it was fun! I don’t always have the right vocabulary and I’m sure my grammar isn’t quite right most of the time, but it’s fun to stretch my brain and try. I always get lots of speaking and listening practice with Aki Sensei, and she always encourages me to keep speaking even when I get stuck. I really appreciate her patience and encouragement, and it has really helped me gain confidence.

In cycling there is an expression of “it never gets easier - you just go faster” and I think the same is true of studying Japanese. I struggled in my first lesson with Aki Sensei 10 months ago and I also struggled in today’s lesson, but today I was able to say and understand many things that I couldn’t 10 months ago. I am making real progress thanks to my weekly lessons with Aki Sensei, and I very much appreciate that she always keeps the lessons engaging and at just the right level for me. As always, I'm looking forward to next week's lesson!