StewBlog

I had a wander down to Heal's for a little look around and realised that the Championship play-off between Bristol City and Hull City was still in play, so I found a nice little pub to watch that in which was pro-Hull, thankfully. I lived in Hull for 3 years whilst I was at university so I was chuffed to see them go through although I worry how they will fare in the Premier League... Well done The Tigers anyway!

I met Annie a little later and we went for a spot of dinner at the increasingly magnificent Busaba. It is the best thai food I have ever had and comes highly recommended. The Tottenham Court Road branch is better than the Wardour Street branch in my opinion. After a lovely dinner we went down to The Garrick Theatre to see if they had any returns for Derren Brown, but no such luck. I did see Stephen Merchant in the foyer though! So, we had a few beers in The Salisbury, a wonderful pub, lined with exquisitely etched mirrors, windows and elaborate art nouveau fittings.

Then a nightcap in The Princess Louise pub, in Holborn. Another fantastically restored pub under the stewardship of the Samuel Smith Brewery.

I was up at 7:00am in order to shower, iron a shirt etc and get to the station in time for the 7:49am departure for London Victoria. I knew from the itinerary that I was sent that there was a one hour grammar test before lunch, so I'd printed off a few things on-line and was brushing up on my grammar definitions and verb tenses, something which I was never taught in English lessons at school (but which I think we should be taught)! I arrived to a bright, warm yet slightly breezy Russell Square, full of birds singing and fallen blossom. I found the Humanities building, of Birkbeck University, easily and made my way up to fourth floor and into a small room with 9 other candidates at 9:45am.

Our interviewers, Dustin and Edward, introduced themselves and presented a lengthy but informative session covering all aspects of the teaching role in Japan. After a short break we returned to the room to find answer papers on our desks with spaces for one hundred answers... The dreaded English grammar test was about to begin... Dustin informed us that we would need to obtain at least seventy correct answers in order to proceed and we were given our question papers and exactly one hour to finish.

The test was divided into approximately ten sections designed to test all round English grammar. I had a little difficulty with a paragraph with fifteen words/phrases underlined and numbered. We had to match up the numbers with a list of grammar definitions. I got about ten of these without too much trouble but struggled with the last five... It looks as if it should be easy, but it wasn't especially when you don't even know what a passive voice is!
I'm pretty sure I nailed the spelling section. For each question, you were given two spellings and had to pick the right one. There were at least fifteen of those so I was pleased with that.
There was another section which I quite liked where you were given a load of words and four definitions to choose from.

I found out after lunch that I had passed the grammar test which I was pleased about considering there is a 30% fail rate... In the afternoon, we all had to present a teaching demonstration in pairs. I did mine with a guy called John on food... It went okay, I think, considering I've not really done anything like that before.

Lastly, I had a fifteen minute interview with Dustin who asked me about preferred location, preferred class demographic, accommodation requests and the reason for me wanting to teach in Japan. I indicated a preference for a big city (Tokyo, Nagoya or Osaka), a private apartment, a 50:50 split between adult/kids classes and a willingness to conduct web lessons. I should find out by the end of this week if they're going to offer me a position... Fingers crossed, I guess!