Phat Blog

Teaching English with an iPad

2012-01-03T06:12:00.000-08:00

Just published an article for gaijinpot detailing ways to teach English with an iPad. As Phat English is now available as an ebook and all the songs are on iTunes, it was also a great chance to discuss some of the different ways that Phat Egnlish can be used to teach as well. Thus far it`s been fairly well received. Feel free to check it out! Here's the link:

http://injapan.gaijinpot.com/2012/01/02/how-to-teach-english-with-an-ipad/

Gaijinpot Article

2011-04-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

Just published an article for Gaijinpot.com (a website for foreigners living in Japan) putting forth a systematic methodology for how to teach English pronunciation. Naturally, as Phat English is the best way out there to do it, I had to include links to a few different exercises that teachers can get for free in there as well. Here's the link! Check it out! http://injapan.gaijinpot.com/2011/04/04/how-to-teach-english-pronunciation/#

Phat English on iTunes!

2011-01-12T21:26:00.000-08:00

Phat English Listening CD1 has finally been accepted to be sold on iTunes. With that, and the fact that the Ebook is for sale as a digital copy through lulu, anyone can now have instant access to all that Phat English has to offer anywhere in the world.

This is particularly exciting for me as there has always been a demand for it as a product in Japan, but with the combined cost and delivery time associated with international shipping, getting it to customers has always been challenging.

Now Phat is ready to move forward full steam in Japan, and I look forward to seeing how well it can do.

Hall's blog

2010-05-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

The aforementioned article on Phat in Hall Houston's blog is now up. Here is the link for anyone who cares to check it out:

http://hallhouston.blogspot.com/2010/05/first-guest-post-chuck-johnson-author.html

On Self-Publishing...

2010-05-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was contacted by Hall Houston, a University EFL teacher in Taiwan, and the author of Provoking Thought about doing a contribution to his blog about my experiences developing and self-publishing Phat English. I'm one of several authors who will be featured in the article, and he is writing it to contrast self-publishing with going through a major publisher, and the respective pros and cons of each. I'm also happy that he is giving me an opportunity to speak about Phat and hopefully continue to introduce it to people who haven't had a chance to see it and/or hear about it yet. Although I've already sent him my contribution, the it will be coming out sometime next month, and I'm really looking forward to reading the whole thing (in particular the experiences of other authors) then.

Phat Private

2010-05-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

Was recently contacted about being the private instructor of a hip-hop dancer who is looking for a teacher to work with him privately. Was supposed to meet with him today, but he was unable to make it, so hopefully, I can meet with him soon. As he will be my 4th Phat English private student, and I've been actually teaching with it for 5 years anyway, I don't expect too many suprises when we are actually 'in the classroom'. At the same time however, as I've got all the tracks in both WAV and MP3 formats now, provided he has an MP3 player, he will be the first person to actually be able to carry them with him as he goes, and I'm interested to see if he dedicates time to learning and practicing the songs on his own, and if so, how that will affect his ability to integrate the pronunciation patterns he is learning from them into his usual speech.

This usually seems to take more time than students utilizing them on their own without prompts as they are singing the songs.

The MP3s are also nice because I can simply put it on my Ipod as well, so when I teach with it, we can practice the full listening/rapping exercises wherever we choose without necessarily making too much noise or having to bother anyone.

In general, working with him should be a fun and interesting experience, and as with each and every student, hopefully watching how he deals with Phat will give me insights into tweeking it into something even better.

Phat at Toin University

2010-05-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

At present, I am working as an accredited English convesation instructor at Toin University Yokohama. Recently, I was given the green light to introduce Phat English as a part of their "English Challenge" (extra-curricular practice) curriculum.

Thus far, they seem to be enjoying it, and are getting it faster than I thought they would. This is encouraging because they are about as low as the students I worked with at ESP and Yokohama Design Gakuen, but without coming from the dance and vocal' majors as those students were.

These guys (and I do mean guys- there's very few women in the program I am working in), are almost exclusively athletes however, and insomuch as I've personally experienced, most high level athletes aren't exactly musically inclined. As such, I figure that if they can do it, and enjoy it, then anyone can. It's also interesting because I am doing the program with a myriad of other teachers from other backgrounds and it will be interesting to see how they interpret and use the text, exercises, and CD as well.

Phat at the BEA.

2010-05-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was contacted by lulu, the self-publishing company through which I produce Phat, and they told me that Phat English was one of the books that they wanted to display on their bahalf at the BEA. (Book Expo America). As the BEA is pretty much, the biggest book show in North America, and lulu will have a large booth in a great location (right by the door) I was pretty excited about the prospect. It just goes to show just how far Phat has really come. I'm curious to see how it will be received, and given what I've heard so far, am expecting good things.

Phat in Baltimore!

2010-03-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Just found out that a presentation for Phat English to school administrators in Baltimore went really well, and it’s likely that it will be implemented into school systems there from either this summer or the fall. How or to what degree it will be implemented is still being worked out, but they seem quite excited about the prospect, so I’m looking forward to hearing more about this as it develops.

I'm also happy about this development as it marks the first step to Phat's working it's way into the American ESL market, where ultimately, I feel it can shine the most, and do people the most good.

As the text and story center around American characters working their way through a 'typical' American college life, it is my hope that those studying with it will not just learn how to 'sound' more American, but also gain a stronger understanding of American culture as well, and as a function of that, have an easier time integrating into American society, making friends, understanding humor, and ultimately have a more positive and fulfilling experience in the states.

That may be a bit of a tall order for one textbook... but as a great friend and fellow author once told me, "Shoot for the moon, and in the least, you will fall amonst the stars."

Tokyo Fire Department Seminar

2010-03-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

Just finished a 4 day seminar for the Tokyo Fire Department. Much like last year, the program consisted of 14 hours of advanced language training for two groups of 6 firemen/women. This year however, as I had much more experience teaching with Phat, it was integrated much more thoroughly into the curriculum, and constituted about half of their training (the rest consisting of differences between English dialects such as GAm, AAVE and RP, oral and written presentation skills, and answering dealing with language / cultural issues that they may have to face while working with foreigners.)

Their Toeic stores ranged from about 630 to 990, so given the fact that most of my experience in teaching with Phat has been at relatively low levels, I also thought this would be a fascinating opportunity to compare and contrast the speed at which they could grasp the concepts.

As one would expect, they could grasp both the concept of the reductions and the logic of figuring out how they are applied considerably quicker than my students at ESP or at Yokohama Design Gakuen. Additionally, their reading and speaking fluency also made it considerably easier for them to grasp the songs as well, and while it might take 5 sessions to be able to perform the karaoke version of the song with my lower level students, they were able to get it in a single day.

At the same time however, even if they understand the concepts, applying the reductions to naturalize their speech still seems to be something that will require continual commitment.

Overall, it was a great experience though, and many students said that they are already looking forward to next year.

2010 Graduating Class of ESP

2010-03-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

The class of dance and vocal students who I teach at ESP Performance Village recently completed their graduation requirements and will be graduating at the end of this month. I’d been working with them once a month or so for about a year now, and despite the fact that most of them were absolute beginners (i.e. didn’t understand ‘How are you?”) I am really happy and proud of how well they have progressed. For the last round of classes together, we went throught the song “Decisions, Decisions” and I had the students sing the lyrics of the song on their own using the ‘Karaoke’ (instrumental) track on the listening CD. (Track #4), and they all managed to not just get through it, but to actually get into it, and do it with gestures as well.

As always seems to be the case, the song practice is what students retain the most (see links at the end to to read about why), so if they do go on to continue studying English (as I hope they will) hopefully these patterns will stay with them as well.

Music of the Hemispheres

The Effects of Music on Memory

Music-Related Memory

Phat on Amazon!

2009-05-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

Recently Amazon contacted me to let me know that Phat has been selected to sold in their online bookstore. I was pretty happy to hear it. At present, Phat is inplay at a lot of different schools in and businesses in Tokyo (Harajuku Performance Village, Yokohama Design Gakuen, 7act, etc, ) and is selling well on Lulu, but hopefully, having it listed on Amazon will give the book even more exposure. Looking forward to seeing how it does.

Essay 1: Why hip-hop music?

2008-03-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

If someone were to ask me why I dedicated 6 years of my life to developing a way to use rap to teach English, I think some of the answers would be obvious: rap's global appeal to young people, it's use of a speaking voice instead of a singing voice, it's colorful and creative nature, it's history as a platform for storytelling, etc, the list goes on and on.

There are a multitude of other reasons however, that aren't so obvious, and those are the ones I would like to share with you in this blog. For one, as an African American myself, Phat English gave me the chance to both create and perpetuate a non-stereotypical image of an African American male through Phat's main character, "Trey" a college-educated fan of hip-hop who moves overseas to start his own business.

In addition to that, Phat's supporting cast, Nina, Brandon, and Kenta, allowed me to do the same thing with other American ethnic minorities, (who are also often stereotyped as having bad english) and more importantly, to not only respectfully portray their unique cultural backgrounds, but do so in such a way that shows that through it all, they are simply Americans.

Beyond my political Agenda however, there were also pedagogical reasons as to why I wanted to develop a way to use rap as a teaching platform.

The first of these is the fact that throughout the entirity of the human existance, music always has been (and probably always will be) the ultimate mnenomic device.

Put simply, if something needs to be remembered, the very best way to do it is to put it in a song. This is why we all know jingles like, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue", and "I before E, except after C" , why commercial songs tend to get 'stuck in our heads', and why at 29 years old, I can still sing the theme song to the 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' when I haven't actually seen the show in at least 10 years.

Further evidence of this was found in a study I recently read about that was conducted by cognitive psychologist, Dr. Daniel Levitin of the Laboratory for Music, Perception, Cognition, and Expertise. Dr. Levitin found that most people, when stopped at random on the street and asked to sing their favorite song, could hit the original tempo of the song within a 4% margin of error, and 2/3 could sing it within a semitone of the original pitch. (Which stands in sharp contrast with other memories which both distort and fade over time.)*

Why exactly this is might still be under debate, but as Dr. Levitin simply stated: "Music has got to be useful for survival, or we would have gotten rid of it years ago."*

As such, for myself, the question of using music to teach was never a question of why. It was more of a question of 'Why not?' and 'How?'

And rap, (which would allow me to set the beats at such a speed that I could perform the lyrics in a natural, easy to understand speech pattern) was my platform of choice.

Afterall... if it worked for Will Smith, it could work for me.

Iiiiiiiiiiiin West Philidelphia, born and raised!
On the playground, is where I spend most of my days...

*Source: New York Times, December 31, 2006- Music of the Hemispheres

Welcome to Phat English!

2008-03-18T01:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome readers!

Thank you for stopping to check out our 'Phat Blog'. This is only the first of many entries to come, so please stop by regularly for updates & revisions in Phat English materials, release dates of new products, and essays about interesting 'Phacts' about American English, hip-hop music or both.

Before I say anything else, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Chuck, and I am both the chief developer of PHAT ENGLISH, and the managing member of Quiet Flame, LLC, the company that produces it. I've been an English teacher for almost 10 years now, and at present, among other things, I work as an American English pronunciation coach for actors and singers in Japan's entertainment industry. If you would like to know more about me, please click on the ''Who is the Real Trey Jackson?' page at the bottom of Phat English's main page. (www.phatenglish.com).

As they say here in Japan, 'Yoroshiku!' ( "Looking forward to working with you!" )