I was interested in English when I was 10 years old and I started to go to an English conversation school. I just wanted to talk in English. To be honest, I was not sure whether it would be helpful. However, one of my teachers who taught me English said that the experiences in your childhood are valuable and they would help you without you knowing it.

When I was a junior high school student, we started English as a subject. The most impressive activities were to sing English songs and to watch movies. We could sing many songs. I think we could learn the pronunciation from listening with pleasure. We could also learn the expressions, which may not appear in textbooks by watching movies, the practical expressions that the native speakers use when they talk in the movies.

When I was first grade in high school, I went to a cram school, where a female teacher taught me English for one year. The way to read sentences that she taught me was really useful for me, and now I still use it. It is to divide sentences into words by using slash, and put the functional phrase in parenthesis, and so on. It helps me to read, and after doing the work, even the long sentences could be much more easily understood. In the winter of that year, I stayed with a family in Australia for the first time. I realized, then, that even if we know many words or idioms, it is still difficult to communicate with the people who have a different culture. Therefore, I made the goal of communicating better through understanding the differences between cultures. When I was third year in high school, I started to go to a preparatory school for university entrance examinations from the summer, and I met a female teacher in the school. The way she taught was really interesting, and the explanations she gave us were intelligible. In addition, her pronunciation was very good. I was excited and thought, then, I want to be good at English like her.

I entered this university with the expectation that I can have many chances to speak English and to touch practical English by having conversations with native speakers and also with the students from overseas in classes or in daily campus life. Therefore, I was depressed at first because there were few classes in which we could speak English. We studied subjects concerned with English but taught in Japanese. Furthermore, even in the classes in which we could have a chance to speak English, everybody hesitated due to shyness. I was quite dissatisfied with the classes in university. However, I realized that I was one of the students who would not speak in these classes. I was not active in class. I just sat there. From then, I have come to think that I have to study more actively, and I decided to speak English without hesitating and being afraid of making mistakes at the beginning of my second year. Last year, there was a student in our class whose pronunciation, we all think, is very good. She said, “I do not think I can pronounce especially well, but you all can do it and you just will not do it.” I was motivated by her words and started to imitate the native speaker’s pronunciation. It is very interesting and I think imitating is effective.

In the beginning of this year, I went to Australia again to study abroad. I think I could speak English much better than before. I tried to keep on smiling and showed my energy and interests in learning and speaking English. I think the efforts to tell somehow and trying hard to communicate are important.