My method is, "quantity over
quality." The more I listened, read, and write in English, the more my English I
improve. That's all.
But I have a big problem. I'm
living in Japan, and I've been working at a Japanese domestic company, so basically everyone around me only uses Japanese. It isn't a good circumstance to learn
English. Even in such a circumstance, making a habit of, and having fun with
listening, reading, and writing in English are key factors of success.
On my way to the office, I listened
to English Podcast, for example, English as a Second Language Podcast, Anderson
Cooper 360, CNN Students News, NBC Nightly News, and TED. I don't make any
effort at all. I listen to these podcasts just for fun. Recently I can't
be interested in Japanese TV program at all, and I mainly watch CNN, BBC,
Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Channel at home.
After I bought Kindle from
Amazon.com, it became easier to buy books from the U.S. than from Japan. When I
buy books from Amazon.com, I get them almost in a moment, but I have to wait for books to arrive from Amazon.co.jp for two or three days. And it's quite easy to
look up a word in a dictionary on Kindle.
After the Great East Japan
Earthquake, I've realized that Japanese press couldn't be trusted, so I always
compare the articles of the same topic on Japanese press and the foreign press.
Now I've been keeping English diary
on Lang-8, which is a social network website for language
exchange, and the BlogSpot. In the office, I write
only in Japanese, but on the Internet I mainly write in English. It's really
much more fun for me to communicate with people all over the world than just in
Japan.
Using English isn't the way of
mastering English. I have many things in English to listen to, read, and write,
so I just do so.
915? Oh, well done!
ReplyDeleteMy students share your problem. They don't get any opportunities to speak English in Tokyo. I tell my varsity students to stop being shy and get themselves an English 恋人, but I haven't figured out what to do with older businessmen yet. ;)
PS: I gave a sad smile when I read your comment about newspapers. I could rewrite that to say, "After the big quake, I realized I couldn't trust Western newspapers." Those were crazy days. I found more reliable (English) information in the social media than in the official media.
In the end I realized that nothing could be trusted completely, so I've been trying to read original texts, which aren't translated, and compare several sources.
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