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Kate Schramm & Will Byrne from
Minakuchi Senior High School


My name is Kate Schramm, and I have been an assistant language teacher at Minakuchi Senior High School for two years. Although my undergraduate degrees were in European history and Spanish language, the opportunity to work with Japanese high school students has been very exciting. It has been very fun to see our students make friends and communicate with students from VANK! I hope that you will be able to keep in touch after the class has ended.
Hello to everyone at VANK! My name is William Byrne, but most people just call me Will. Ive been teaching at Minkuchi Senior High School in Shiga, Japan for two years and its been a lot of fun. Im from England and studied law at Nottingham University there. I also spent a year studying at the University of Goettingen in Germany. I hope to return to England next year and continue my legal studies. I really enjoy seeing our Japanese students writing email to Korean students at VANK and hope that you can build lasting email friendships.
Weve been running the e-mail exchange for some four years now, and it has proved very popular with the Japanese students of English. Its great that the students have a chance to use the English they are learning in order communicate in a real context; they can take the language from the classroom and apply it in the real world. Students are more motivated to learn English when they recieve emails from VANK. E-pals Classroom Exchange Recommendation with VANK

Despite some difficulties with setting up email addresses and scheduling regular sending of email, the email exchange is a well-liked aspect of the Cultural Course studentscurriculum. It complements their other study topics and exposes them to another culture and another language.

Kate Schramm & Will Byrne from Minakuchi Senior High School