When I was growing up in Japan, taking English second language training was mandatory in almost every school. If you ask any English foreign language teacher about Japanese students, they will probably tell you the same things. We tend to have some of the best grammatical understanding of the English language, but we have a lot of difficulty making conversation in a language that is not native to us. Good grammar is a product of our education system. In English language training, as in everything else, the school system puts a lot of emphasis on technical knowledge. The problem is that, with the pressure to do everything correctly, we do not feel comfortable taking risks. And speaking English when you did not grow up with it is definitely a risk.
This is why almost everyone who wants to succeed in business in Japan goes on to take a spoken English course. Although you can find spoken English courses in Japan, they are not nearly as popular as you might think. In order to really learn how to speak English fluently, you see, it is necessary to get outside of Japan and go to a country where it is spoken as the native tongue.
That is why I decided to take a spoken English course at St. Giles academy, a small English language school in San Francisco. I have wanted to learn to speak English fluently ever since I became interested in Hollywood movies at the age of 15. There are all kinds of tools out there for learning English, but a lot of them are not worth all that much. One of my friends, for example, took a spoken English course online when we were teenagers. Because there was no one there to correct his speaking, it did him very little good, and cost his parents a lot of money as well! I knew that there was only one way to go about learning English: travel abroad and take some classes.
The spoken English course was one of the biggest challenges of my whole entire life. You see, participation was one of the main requirements. We were all required to try out each and ever sentence ourselves, and even to hold conversations with native English speakers. Although it was a little hard to do at first, soon I began to feel comfortable with the conversation sessions. I even made a few lasting friendships!
Pages
▼