Name: Akiko Miyazaki

Year: 1997

 

 

     My LLH started when I was two years old. I moved to United States because of my father's job. Since I was very young, I do not remember how I learned English. But I think I had a lot of opportunities. Five days a week I went to ordinary American school like other students. And after school, I played with my friends. Some of them are Japanese and others are native speakers. We could all speak daily English and it was natural for me.

     When I was nine years old, I came back to Japan. I went to an elementary school which receives returnees. I thought I could use English at least in some classes. But there were hardly any special classes to do with English. I felt sad. And at that point, I realized I liked English very much and missed the United States. So my parents let me go to a English conversation class to continue my English ability. This class was really good. The teacher was a Canadian man and he had a nice pronunciation. And there was only four students in the class so I could say opinions very easily. But I think the best thing was, this class didn't use difficult materials. We used text books about conversation, games, rhymes and so on. I really had a good time learning English and also having fun with the classmates.

     After entering JHS, I was very shocked because I had to study what I had already learned. I thought the English classes were boring. We had to study just for tests, and no fun. While I was a HS student, I changed. Students usually study hard for the entrance examination of university. And I was one of them. Since I still liked English very much, I decided to go to Nanzan University. I heard Nanzan is a great school to improve my English speaking and hearing ability.

     And here I am, Eibei-ka first year student. At first, I was very surprised and also happy to take Oral Communication (OC) class. I can speak all English in class and don't have to do all those difficult studying things like JHS and HS. But at the beginning of the class, I was quite shy and couldn't speak as I expected. I guess my English speaking capacity has decreased. So I thought this must be a chance to start learning English from the beginning.

     In the lesson, I learned several things that helped me improve my English. First, I learned to continue talking with my partner in English. Having a conversation with  partners makes me feel relaxed, and I can enjoy learning a lot of things from them .   Second, I learned shadowing. When shadowing, I have to say what my partner said. I thought shadowing bothers my partner during our conversation. To tell the truth, shadowing is an act to tell our partners that I'm listening to them carefully and remembering what they said. Yes, shadowing is a good way to memorize things. You just repeat the words you want to remember and also say them in your mind. Now, I sometimes use shadowing out of class. I noticed we can use it not only in English class but also in other classes. The third thing is videoing. I couldn’t believe that the conversation between me and my partner had to be recorded by a video. I was at first embarrassed and couldn’t act as I wanted to. After several times, I learned that to succeed in videoing, I have to prepare what I am going to say. I wrote some paragraphs and read them out loud. This helped me a lot. I’m thinking videoing is the opportunity to show how we are improving our English. So I always try to do my best. Forth, I learned summarizing. I really had a hard time learning this. When we do videoing, almost every classmate can do this. I was anxious about this and tried to find a solution. Just then, our teacher told us that we could do more summarizing if we make more efforts to do shadowing. I realized I didn’t shadow very much while videoing. After that, I shadowed my partner as much as I could. And one day in autumn, I summarized very well on  the video. I couldn’t believe it at first. But after watching my video, I felt proud of myself. Although it took me a long time to succeed it, I knew I could do it.

     In my next three years, I’ll try to get a high score in TOEFL, go abroad to see the world, read English books and so on. And I must study writing, one of my weak area, at the same time. We should know that there are only four years to study in the university and we should use time efficiently.

     If I can advise you, next year Eibei-ka first year students, I want you to know that you should be positive and you should just relax. There will be some problems. But remember that your teachers and other friends will be good help. I’ll give you my favorite phrase, "You can do it!".