I am Kasamy, teacher of Obirin Junior College. Wata of "Ibunka Project", forwarded your email to us, so I am happy to answer your question about how to study English language in my case. When it comes to my study history, I can not forget 3 events that would shape my life.

First of all, when I was 19 years old, I went to England and stayed with English family for one month. This experience changed my way of studying English dramatically. Before that, I liked studying English, but the study focused on writing and reading aspects. I tried to learn as many new words as possible, and tried to write English correctly. However, meeting the English family, I started learning English to enjoy communication with people. So, I began learning English in order to enjoy communication by focusing on listening and speaking aspects, rather than writing and reading aspects. I have listened to radio program for studying English since then. When I was young, I used cassette tapes. (But now you can use Internet sites for English learning. such as http://www.voanews.com/english/portal.cfm )

Secondly, after this experience, I studied English to enter university abroad. As you may know, there are some English tests like TOEFL, IELTS, and GMAT. I wanted to study abroad, I studied English for these tests. There are a lot of books and materials (CD, cassette tape) in library and book stores. It is interesting to check various books, and I studied English with the support of them. I recapped again and again with them, and I think recapping is very important.

Finally, I studied Education at a university in England for about one year from 2000. While I studied Education, which was my major, I also kept studying English by reading a lot of English papers, and tried to talk with college-mates. That was a very good chance for me to be under English shower. It is a great opportunity to go abroad in order to improve English, but at the same time, I think we can study English without going abroad. We can enjoy English shower anywhere in this Internet era. There are many web sites to learn English. When you input “English learning” as a key word for portal site, such as Google ( www.google.com), and Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), you can get URL of English sites easily.

Thus, there are three big events in my history of leaning English; meeting English family, preparing English tests for studying abroad, and studying in a university in English. What I think as important factors for studying English is to enjoy English study for real communication. Also if you have goals, it can motivate and encourage you. Moreover, I think the more English you input, the better for English learning.