By Natsuko Ito

Professor Alan Bossaer who teaches English Skills�氈`�｢, Skills �､,　Speech Communication, Writing and Phonetics, came to Sapporo University this year. His students say it is easy to understand his teaching style so it is fun and his classes are a great draw for them. They also say that he sometimes tells interesting stories about his school days.

Professor Bossaer is from a small city in Saskatchewan, Canada, called North Battleford. When he was in high school, he enjoyed English very much. He also enjoyed sports and he was the captain of his volleyball, badminton, and football teams. He also played on the basketball and baseball teams. His volleyball and basketball coach, who happened to be the same guy, recommended that he go to university and said that he would be a good teacher because he was a good leader. That was the first time he thought about becoming a teacher.

After graduationing from high school, he worked for General Motors Car Company in Canada for two and a half years in order to save money for university. After that, he went to the University of Saskatchewan, which coincidently has a connection with Sapporo University.

Professor Bossaer studied to be a teacher for six years and got two degrees. One is a Masterﾕs of Science in Teaching English and the other is in Kinesiology (the study of physiology and anatomy). He also belonged to the Chinese Language Association at his university. He even performed in some Christmas plays in Chinese. After graduation, he taught for about a year in Canada. After that, his Chinese friend asked him to teach English at a university in Beijing. This was a turning point for him.

The school year ends in June in Canada but the university job was from February in Beijing, so he had about a half-year break. During that time he came to Japan and taught at a big language school in Sendai.

A half year later, before he was to go to China, the owner there asked him to be the director of the school, so his goal changed. He didnﾕt go to China, but instead stayed in Japan. He is still here 16 years later.

Looking back over those 16 years, Professor Bossaer taught for three years in Sendai, and after that he taught at EC in Sapporo. There he served as the principle teacher, which was a big responsibility. Though he taught English, a large part of this job was training teachers and developing teaching materials.

Afterward, he taught English at Hokusei Girlsﾕ High School for four years. After that, he taught at Sapporo Gakuin University. PowerPoint is one of Professor Bossaerﾕs special areas and he taught many lessons at Sapporo Gakuin University with the aid of computers. He has also done many presentations around Japan for such organizations as JALT (The Japan Association of Language Teaching) and METS (Meeting of English Teachers of Sapporo) in the areas of computer-assisted language learning, vocabulary comprehension and academic writing.

Professor Bossaer has found most of his students at Sapporo University to be motivated and they seem to like English, so he hopes to able to continue to teach here. He also wants to get a PhD in the near future. He has written a textbook called ”What Should I Say? Nanteiuno?” And this year, he will publish another text book.

His main hobby is playing the drums and he often plays gigs in Sapporo. He also plays ice hockey, baseball and golf.

His impression of Sapporo is that it is ”like a small big city.” The population is large but in area it is rather small. However, it is a very comfortable place to live. As for Sapporo University, it is much smaller than the University of Saskatchewan, but he feels it is more comfortable to teach here, where there is a friendly, small city atmosphere.

Finally, Professor Bossaer leaves us with this message: ”You should make the most of your time at university.” It means a lot of students donﾕt do enough at university. ”Apply what you have learned at the university to make yourself and the world a better place.” It is an important message.