My Tips

KAZUKO TAKEUCHI

The number of Japanese people who can speak English fluently has been increasing. Yet, when we remember the fact that all junior high school students receive English education, the proportion of English-speaking Japanese is still small. We find many how-to books on speaking English in the bookstores, but people seem not to have made remarkable progress. Are they just impatient?

I share two of my tips for speaking English, or any foreign language. First, if your children are infants, use foreign words in your daily life. For example, when we had breakfast, I told my children in English "Breakfast is ready,"; when I praised my children, I said, "You did it!"; and when my children sneezed, I said, "Bless you!" I tried to use both English and Japanese in our daily life. Children don't have a concept of foreign languages at an early age, so they can memorize foreign words naturally and unconsciously. I also used German for tableware, and the German words became common in my family. A plate is Teller, a fork is Gabel, a knife is Messer, "I'm full" is "Ich bin satt," etc. Children learn rapidly. If they go abroad, they speak the language there fluently after one month, so I want to give children chances to speak foreign languages.

Another tip is 'English composition in the train.' Since I lived in Germany when I was little and later came back to Japan, English was a foreign language for me. I tried to express in English what I saw in the train like views or people. Though expressing abstract things was difficult, finding the proper words for what I saw was relatively easy. For example, I compose in Japanese: "Though there was an old house there, a new condominium is already built." Then, I try to compose its English translation. I realized there were many Japanese English words that have different meanings from the original English. Lack of vocabulary made it difficult to put into words what I wanted to say. Yet I did my best using all the words that I knew. I always made several expressions for one thing. When I could finally compose a sentence, I gave a deep sigh of relief. Thanks to this composition training, I came to be able to express one thing in at least three languages; and this was quite useful in English conversation later.

I got a large amount of vocabulary in this English composition training in the train. In addition, I learned here the words that we often use in daily life, so they have helped me a lot in English conversation. Later, objects of my English composition became invisible things like opinions, thoughts, and criticism. Through such training, you will see how much content you know and on which you can express your opinions. I think good English skills require vocabulary and sophistication, and depend on how many things you have in your heart to tell the others.

People today live busy lives, so I hope to make good use of time to progress further. In this sense, I think a train is a good place to learn foreign languages.