Name: Tsuyoshi Kawamura

Year: 1997

 

 

     I started to learn English from JHS. I did not think that I wanted to be a good English speaker then. Therefore I did not study hard. As a result, I could not get good grades. However, when I was a second year student in JHS, I tried to get good grades in one test, and I succeeded in getting a good grade. In particular, I got a better grade in English than other subject. After that time, English became my favorite subject and  I started to study English harder than any of the other subjects. But I just studied reading and writing in JHS. Consequently, when I talked with a native English teacher for the first time in JHS, I could not understand what he said. After that time, I decided to learn listening. However, I did not know how to study listening. So I just listened to English songs with lyrics over and over.

     After I passed the HS entrance examination, I read long English sentences, because my private teacher said that "it will be very useful if you can read long sentences after you enter the HS." As she said, it enabled me to improve my reading ability and memorize many words. I had many tests when I was a HS student, but we did not have listening tests. Consequently, I had to study reading and writing harder than listening. When I was a third year student in HS, I talked about studying listening for entrance examination with my friend who also took the examination of this university, I asked him how he studied listening for the exams, and he answered that he listened to the NHK radio conversation program. From then, I started to listen to the NHK radio conversation program everyday. Thanks to that radio conversation program, I could pass the entrance examination of this university.

     When I came to first English class in this university, I was surprised because I found that my English ability was very low. I could not understand what the teacher said and I could not tell what I wanted to say. Therefore I changed my way of learning English. I came to listen to L.L tapes carefully to improve my listening ability, and I try to think in English in my head.

     I believe that if I do shadowing and summarizing and homework hard, I can become a good English speaker.