I began learning English when I was a 5th year student of elementary school. At that time, I studied other subjects using the teaching materials from sinken-zemi of Benesse Corporation. We didn’t have English class at school but sinken-zemi had a program to learn English before we entered junior high school. They had a cassette tape and a booklet for each month, and I learned the names of flowers, insects, birds, animals, stationary, and also greetings, alphabet and each pronunciation, and so on. I enjoyed listening to the tapes and practiced pronunciation hard.

In JHS, we sang songs, did bingo games with English words, recited a short story, and staged the play, “Peach-Taro” (Momo-Taro) in English at school festival. Of course we had a textbook. We had fun in class because the teacher was nice and she devised various interesting ways to learn for us.

As I went to HS that was the only international course school in Tokyo, we had many English classes and more native teachers than the other schools. I had at least three classes with a native teacher per week, for writing, reading and oral communication or foreign matters. We also had a class in which a person from another country came each week to give a lecture about his or her country. The person was sometimes the teacher of our school and the others were the people who worked in Japan. They talked sometimes in Japanese but sometimes only in English. That’s why I’m somewhat used to listening to English. Also we had a vocabulary test every week. We used one wordbook for one year, namely, three books for three years. It was very hard for me to learn words constantly, but thanks to it, I think I could improve my English skills. And not only the vocabulary test, but also a lot of other activities helped me improve. I learned that if your score of each test is not so good, your effort surely leads to improvement. And even though you don’t like tests, if you try to enjoy them, your English will become better unconsciously. I believe the important things are to keep learning and enjoy it.

I have an experience that really embarrassed me. When I was in high school, one day I was on the train and a foreigner asked me the way in Japanese. I don’t remember where he was from clearly, but it was not an English speaking country. I asked him, “Can you speak English?” I didn’t know it was embarrassing to ask it that way at that time, but after years, I found that I should have asked, “Do you speak English?” or “Do you use English?” or something. If I used the word “can”, I should have been able to speak English very well. But I didn’t. And also it might have included the feeling of looking down on the person though I didn’t. What was more, it was in the train and everyone there heard me. I think I won’t forget this experience forever, but I learned the usage of the word “can”.

Anyway, since I really like English and have enjoyed learning it, I would like to tell more people how interesting it is to learn it in the future. Actually, I teach two boys English now, but one is in the 3^rd year of high school and I have to teach grammatical English for the entrance examination. It isn’t really interesting, therefore I would rather teach little children, partly because I like little kids. For this plan, I will learn English much more before graduation. Especially, I really need my vocabulary to increase.

My other dream is to teach Japanese to people from abroad. As I think of this, I should study much more about Japan, my home country. It is often said that Japanese young people have too little knowledge about their country. I think it is true. I don’t know how to answer when I am asked about Japanese culture, especially traditional cultures. Now I am ashamed of being a little indifferent to our own culture and language. I’m learning them in Dokkyo’s classes now, but it is not enough. I should study them by myself. I recognized after I enter this university that even if you master English, it’s not so useful if you don’t have knowledge and thoughts of your country, because you can’t use English if you don’t have them and you can’t explain or say your opinions even in Japanese. I mean English is one of the ways we communicate with people, but it’s not the only important thing to be able to speak English. Learning a language is to learn the culture in which the language is spoken. If you know well about your country’s culture, language and of course other things, you can learn other cultures through languages much better.

My advice to next year’s first-year students: First, if you want to master English, you should learn the cultures of English-speaking countries, and also learn your own culture and language. Second, you should have your own opinion about everything. Third, you should keep learning because it surely leads to your success and don’t be afraid of mistakes. Finally, please enjoy learning!