At university, I studied educational psychology, but I am very sceptical about a lot of research, how much of that research ever makes a real difference in the classroom? In Britain, primary school starts at five years old and reading is the first priority. My older brother and sister learned to read quickly, but I made no progress at all because the style of teaching had changed. My mother noticed this and she taught me to read. Without her help, I truly believe I would have been illiterate. But my writing skills lagged behind, luckily my history teacher (Graham Wigley) in secondary school, during his own time helped me improve. A large part of my work now is helping Japanese academics with their English writing and presentations, I could never have been able to do this without the help of my mother and history teacher, I am truly grateful to them. So literacy is a very important subject for me. Japanese people often tell me that reading English is difficult, but if
