Name: Senae Oda

Year: 1996              

 

                                                                                                                        

     I am able to speak English without much difficulty today. But in order to be able to speak English, I had to go through many things. I have two main factors that I think were important for my English acquisition. One is my experiences in the United States and the other is the environment that I was in after coming back to Japan.

     My English learning started when I was in elementary school in Japan. I took some English classes outside of school for a while. My mother let me go to a private school other than public school and an English conversation class with a native English speaker. In the private school, I learned grammar. This was done by hand outs that were given out and we learned according to our English levels. Along with that, I went to a house in the neighborhood with my friends. An American lived there and we took an English conversation class there.

     One of the two important factors for my English learning happened when I was 9 years old, when I was in 4th grade. My father was transferred to the United States by his company and I had to go to the U. S. with my parents. The city that I went to, Pittsburgh, didn't have a full-time Japanese school. So, I had to go to a public school. When I first went to the U. S. , I was not able to speak much English. All that I could say were some greetings and a couple of other things. But I only had one choice, to go to the public school. This was quite hard for me because I had to go to a place where I could understand just a little of what people around me were saying. It was also hard for me to make many friends because I was not able to communicate in words. But I gradually made friends and they helped me learn English very much.   What helped the most in my learning English at the beginning was attending ESL (English as a Second Language) class. This gave assistance to my English learning because for one thing, we used textbooks that were suitable for my English level and for another, the teacher spoke very clearly and slowly for me to understand her. This class helped me mentally also, because this was a place for me to relax in the whole school. My ESL teacher understood how I felt in a situation like this, probably because she had seen many students in the same situation.

     Along with ESL class, I took a private English class at home. This also helped a lot because I was able to speak in English outside of school. I had a chance to speak whatever I liked in this class and I was able to speak more than at school because the students were me and my mother. My private English teacher helped me mentally also.     The third thing that helped me was listening to the radio, watching TV and reading books at home. For listening and speaking English, it is important to listen to English at home also. And to learn grammar I read many books. I listened to whichever radio station I liked and I watched whichever show I liked. I read whatever I liked to read. Through these things I learned English very naturally. Also, with a lot of help from my mother, I did all the homework that was assigned in my regular classes, even though I did not understand them. I used dictionaries and did the homework as perfectly as I could. I tried my best.

     In these ways I learned much English in three and a half years. In my last year in the U. S. , I was able to attend every class with my friends, I did not have to take ESL class anymore. Through my life in the U. S. , I learned English and felt many other things such as communicating without using word and the kindness of people.

     After living in U. S. for three years, I came back to Japan. The second important thing in my acquiring English was going to a high school where I would not forget English. So, after coming back to Japan, I did not go to a public school. Instead, I went to an international high school. This is a school which accepts expatriate Japanese children and foreigners. In this school, they have many native English speaker teachers and we had more English classes compared to public schools.

     Also, we had our English classes leveled so that children of higher English ability could learn more difficult English and not lose our English ability. This is because we had children coming back from all parts of the world, including children coming from non-English speaking countries. Thanks to this school, I was able to keep some of my English ability. I could not say that I did not lose any. I did lose a lot of my English ability, but not as much as I would have if I went to a public school.

     In this way, I learned English and I kept my English ability. My learning English has not been easy and I made a lot of efforts.