VOICE – Always A Party

VOICE is based in a room where anyone can come and chat for however long they want; one ticket allows them to stay between 2:15pm and 9pm on a set day. Some VOICE’s are purely for lower-levels in which you play games or hold very simple conversations. However, on the weekend, it’s normally higher levels.

On the weekends, because there are many instructors, you have one VOICE lesson each. However, during the week you can have two or three.

VOICE is bizarre. A good mix of people can lead to a great discussion or debate about literally anything, excluding taboo subjects; sex, earthquakes, WWII. However, just one awkward person can lead to an excruciatingly painful 40 minutes: no-one talks, you ask question after question and just receive yes or no answers. It can be horrible. Steve perfectly described it as a bad party, where you’re the host and no-one wants to be there. Which is strange since they pay to go yet don’t want to talk?!

Anyway, I was slightly dreading my first VOICE but as I found out it was a good group with decent English speaking abilities. They asked where I was from, what I thought of Japan and so on, and asked what I studied at Uni. Bear in mind that talk of sex is a big no-no, coupled with me expecting very low comprehension of English, so I was shocked when they first reply is “so what do you think about Freud’s interpretation of sex within dreams?”. Huh!?! I quickly turned the topic on to animal behaviour (one of my favourite modules at Uni) and began a debate on “animals and humans: what separates the two”*. Anyway, this lead to a fantastic conversation, and time flew by.

I didn’t know what they thought, or how this VOICE compared to other instructors. It is only now, two weeks later, that other instructors tell me that those students still tell them it was the best VOICE lesson ever. Too bad they never told me. Still, compared to some of the sucky VOICE’s I’ve had recently**, at least I know what sort of things make a good lesson.

*the answer, I guarantee, is “intention and the ability to plan”. If anyone wants a fuller answer, I’m more than happy…
**to follow