English Teacher Elena Voice of the students- Pick Up! -"At the end of the lesson she tells me where we will be studying for the next lesson and that helps me to study. During the lesson she uses the base of what we learned in the text to teach me different usage. I feel like I am actually learning and it has become fun to learn English." -"We are basically having conversational style lessons on my request. She always corrects my mistakes naturally during our conversations which is easy to understand." -"She always expresses what she likes or dislikes, agrees or disagrees directly, that influenced me to speak and express directly too. I think it is a very good training." -"She is very familiar with Japanese economic situations, it is very enjoyable for the various topics that she brings in to the free discussions. She has a lot of experiences aboard too and able to bring up many global topics which are very informative." -"I’ve started writing in English around the same time every week and have got into the habit of thinking and writing in English. The teacher carefully looks over what I write, and I’ve started looking at her corrections as I prepare to write in order to avoid making the same mistakes over and over. She keeps me on my toes in a good way. It’s also very useful how she uses accurate examples to support her claims, which is something I cannot easily do on the spot. I learn a lot from this. When I asked Elena how to improve my writing, she advised me to read a lot, which helped me realize the link between studying writing and reading. Being raised in Japan, as I studied English writing, I felt the need to focus on reinforcing grammar and memorizing set phrases, and acquiring a framework of reasoning. This may have been the case for the technical books I was interested in from university, graduate school and work. However, I ended up putting all my attention into accurately understanding the contents in a short period of time. Yet, when I started looking for expressions I could use in the writing I give to Elena and reading to write and writing to read, working on reading comprehension became enjoyable and exploratory, which I did not expect." -"Her lessons are very enjoyable and without any stress. Since she is able to speak Japanese, even for those small differences in nuance, she could correct me as well. I am very glad for this." -"Although I don’t think I could have great improvement by having lesson once a week, since her lesson is very relaxing and enjoyable, I became more relax when speaking English and hence I could enjoy more when I travelled in the last summer than before." -"I’m quite satisfied with the contents of the program and the teacher." -"Since she can speak Japanese as well, while I want to say something by telling her in Japanese, she could tell me the exact expression in English and that always surprises me. Like this is very helpful for my learning." - -"I’m having free talk lessons with Elena. I love our conversations - the topics that Elena chooses are interesting and easy to understand. She also gives me prompt, helpful feedback afterwards, with the mistakes I made and how to rectify them."