TESL Reporter, Volume 43: Full Issue 1, Year 2010

Abstract

In the second semester of 2007, I took over a full-year EFL course at a university in
central Tokyo, teaching a group of students taken from the Education and Psychology
departments. Where many institutions allow the lecturer carte blanche with regard to
course content, this university has a prescribed syllabus, to which the previous teacher
had added their own requirements. I was thus placed in the difficult position of taking
over a class mid-course and balancing the expectations of the students with those of the
institution and the demands of their previous instructor.