Sunday, September 21, 2008

Don't stop English

To be honest, studying English is boring to me. That’s why I am still a poor speaker of English and I should take the ESL class.

It’s not just me, but many Japanese students who have been feeling unsatisfied with learning English at school. That’s why native English speakers in Japan tend to avoid Japanese people in the street.

Nevertheless, there are many English schools in many towns in Japan and they are very popular, especially, among business people and housewives. It seems to show that many Japanese people want to master English, but at the same time somewhat weird, doesn’t it?

Many Japanese people have already studied English at school, but why do they want to study English at another school? Couldn't they enjoy English at school? I have been wondering why they couldn’t and what schools should do to make them enjoy it. This question is closely related to the public policies that improve the ability of most of Japanese people to use English that has been thought as an internationally lower level.

Actually, many English teachers in Japan have tried and studied hard to make them enjoy English, but at present it doesn’t look like they’ve succeeded.

One of the reasons is for us to study English at school in Japan. It’s just an ironical expression, but I think that it must be to the point.

Certainly few people like just memorizing English grammar, words and idioms. It must be a hard time and a little too boring. But what should it be better for us to do when studying English? The answer is quite easy: don’t study English!!

Reading through a book written in English that I like looks better for us to learn writing and reading English. Moreover, this is my teacher’s advice, to speak English it would be an effective and nice way for us to make English-speaking friends, because we can use English with a great passion.

Let me talk about my experience. Reading through my favorite textbook of economics was good for me. Even though it had more than 700 pages, its English was pretty easy to read and made me enjoy the time. That time I didn’t study English then, but had just studied an introductory economics.

By reading this English textbook, I could study how economics was explained in English by native English speaker.

It was very important because I felt kind of achievement. I reflected that it was important to feel really happy when we touched English. Of course, speaking English with a girl for whom I had felt affection would have been also a good way to learn English.

The key point for us to learn something is to have a great affection for it. It would be difficult for us to have it for studying English grammar, words and idioms. Therefore, we must first think about how to have such a feeling about studying English.

Studying is always boring. So I try to say to myself, "studying English is a bad way to learn English, but touching English as happily as possible should be needed most when studying English." Don't study English, but please don't stop it!

In this sense, it could be said that teachers who must teach students English must have a hard time conducting their English class.

(This post has been already checked by a native speaker of English, but I revised it a little.)

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