英語は“勉強”を卒業してから伸びる【Podcast文字起こし】

Hi Eiji. good to see you. I want to let you know I think we’re on the same side of the world this time.
I’m currently in Japan enjoying some vacation.

Thank you, thank you.
It’s always a great time.

It is currently really cold.
January tends to be the off season, right? Down time.
Not a lot of people come as opposed to summer, which I think I hear is getting hotter and hotter every summer.

But, I’m currently in Ishikawa and it’s been snowing.
So, back in the States it was snowing as well and here it’s snowing.
So not much difference there besides the culture and the language.

But I’ve been having a good time.
I’ve been visiting some museums and trying out the food.
I think the food is way different, obviously, than what you get back in the States.

But it’s good flavors, I think.
I know there are a lot of people who are either Japanese learners or just visiting.

They don’t really know about… I think not a lot of people come to Ishikawa as opposed to… like Tokyo or the more known places.

Yeah, so obviously we’ve talked before.
This isn’t my first time here.

I lived here in Ishikawa 2023 to 2024, so a full year.
And I was teaching English.

It was a very interesting experience as far as culturally, as far as the way English is taught here is different than the way it’s taught outside of here.

So it was a learning experience for me to teach English in Japan.

A lot of people, a lot of students, I think in early elementary school are really excited to speak.

But once they transition into middle school, they have so many tests they have to study for, grades they have to pass that I think there isn’t a lot of focus put on English, right?

And maybe you can, from your perspective, if this is true, when you were in school, maybe that the focus isn’t English as a language as more than it is English as a subject you have to pass, I think.

Yeah.
So my teaching experience here, one of the first weeks at my school, my principal, she specifically said to help inspire the children to want to learn English, to know about life outside of Japan, so they can at least study the English a lot more.

And I really took that as my duty.
I wanted to show them about where I’ve been, how they can use English anywhere around the world.

It’s a pretty international language.
If not the number one international language, universal language, wherever you go.

But the teaching here, I will be honest, it was a little difficult because the English level was a lot lower than I expected.

Granted, I am and I was teaching in the countryside.
So I wasn’t in a big city where you get a lot of tourism, a lot of foreign people who come.
So that was to be expected.

But the English, the students were very excited to learn.

Oh, so I will say, I think they’re pretty good at writing.
In my experience, good at writing.

With my students, they were good at listening, but they didn’t do well with, how do you say, speaking. Communication was very hard because as you know, you kind of have to be able to practice it or use it.

You have to be able to have somebody to speak English with.
But if you’re in Japan, it makes sense to speak Japanese, right?
As opposed to you’re not talking to anybody in English.

So how about you, Eiji?
What was your motivation to want to speak as well as you do?
Why did you want to learn to speak well?

So I have a question for you.

Were you motivated to study because you wanted to pass these tests like the Eiken or the TOEFL?

Were you motivated to pass the test or were you motivated to communicate?

And what’s the difference for you?

Yes.
I completely agree with you.

I think often times my experience when I was teaching here was seeing students who can produce English.

They can write it, they can speak it.
And then you have students who can pass English, right?

And sometimes they’re not the same and sometimes they are.

And because I also teach outside of Japan, teach online.

This seems to be a very global problem.
They’re not a problem, but a global situation.

And I think it’s really interesting to see.

These are dependent, it’s case by case, right?

It depends on the individual person, you know, their response time or their communication skills might be, maybe they’re really good in English and in Japanese or they’re really bad in both.

And so that’s something you have to develop, right?

So when people have, you know, their communication skills are not the best, they might, for example, if they’re not the best communication skills in Japanese, they might not be the best communication skills in English, right?

There’s a lot of more processes going on.
You’re talking for a language you don’t know, talking about words and grammar that are new to you.

Are you saying, Eiji, that part of the communication is to push yourself to try in English and go out of your comfort zone?

Exactly.
I think you hit the main point of today’s conversation as well is you wouldn’t read this newspaper in Japanese.

Why are you trying in English? It’s almost making it twice as difficult.

What I like to tell my students who are learning English, I always tell them just do what you would do in your own language or read about what you’re already interested in in your own language.

And when I teach my students, especially when I taught here in Japan, I always ask them, what do you like?

So when I know what they like, they’re more excited to talk about either video games or their favorite pop artists or cooking or reading. They have motivation and I think what was difficult teaching in Japan was sometimes the students aren’t motivated to learn English.

So how do you motivate yourself as a student to learn a new language?

One, I think you have to want to learn the language in some degree, to some degree, but also you have to keep yourself motivated, right?

For you, you enjoy reading novels.

That’s how you’re motivated.

And I actually that’s my number one recommendation is reading because you are activating your English brain so much.

So that’s good that you read books.

Of course.

Yes, right, right.
You can’t digest it.
It’s not going to stay.

You know, there’s a saying that something goes in one ear and then out the other.
So it just goes in and it doesn’t stay in here.

Exactly.

Curiosity, right?

Well, I even want to add, Eiji, I’m very impressed that you can read and understand these topics because for native English speakers, they’re difficult.

These are advanced, challenging, this is challenging material.
So you’re challenging yourself to learn new words, new concepts, new grammar.

Right?

Wow.
Yeah.

Yeah, of course.
I think that’s the main motivation is do it because you want to do it, right? Eventually.

I think a lot of things are passive, like you’ll be able to recognize new words, you’ll be able to understand different English meanings, like books like Tufti or The Law of Attraction.

And it’s universal, I think.

Yeah.
I think that’s the biggest thing when I was teaching in Japan is a lot of students.

They want to just pass the class.
So they have to do what they have to do.

Oftentimes what I think happens is they do it because they have to. And then you forget the language because you don’t practice it because you’re studying it as a subject to pass it, to get the score, to get that band you want.

You really have to be motivated.

Really?

Mm-hmm.

Well, because you gradually you got there gradually.

And I think that’s what, you know, to just end it on this note is a lot of people, want to go from A to B in one day.

And it’s impossible to learn and be fluent in English or Japanese in one day, right?

It’s like planting.
You have to water it.

Yeah, that’s true!

You know, I’ll tell you, I also study a little Japanese and I’m hesitant to take the JLPT because it’s almost like a competition.
Some people get really competitive.

They say, oh, you’re N5, oh, you’re N3, you’re N1, fluent, but they don’t know how to speak, right?
They know a thousand kanji, but they don’t speak.

And I told myself, I don’t want to think of my skills as a number.

If I can talk to this person, then I know I’m okay.
And gradually I’ll get there when I need to get there.

Of course, it’s a… I don’t know, I think a lot of people take language learning very competitively.
For people who, on the opposite side, people who want to study language, they’re very competitive sometimes. It’s…scary.

Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Exactly.

I just actually received a few messages from new students who want to learn English, but they’re not beginners.

They’re not intermediate.
They are well into the advanced level.

And at that point, it’s very hard to correct somebody who is, who can communicate, right?
And they’re trying to reach native level, but sometimes you don’t have to be native level to communicate with people.

Now if that’s your goal, that’s perfectly your goal.

Often times I have students who say, you’re not correcting me, am I saying everything right, you haven’t corrected me, but then I tell them all of your mistakes are so small, it doesn’t really change what you’re saying, you know?

Not even native English speakers speak perfectly.
Sometimes they make a lot of grammar mistakes and they don’t even know.

And so there’s a healthy balance.
You can’t be on both ends, right?

Extremely perfect, but also you don’t care.
And that’s what I like to tell students.
Even here when I was in Japan telling them say something weird, it’s okay if you use the wrong grammar.

We can talk about the right way to say it.
And you practice and you practice and you practice and eventually you get somewhere where you feel confident.

Even if you make a mistake, two mistakes, yeah, everything is, it’s gonna be great.
It’s gonna be perfectly fine.
And so on that note,

I think, people who are looking to improve, I think you are a perfect example of where somebody can, what they can achieve if you keep practicing, you know.

So like I’ve always told you and we’ve known each other for a long time, I think your English is very proficient and yeah, I think you can tell all of the listeners the things that you do.

And I feel like they’ll really enjoy what we have to say on this episode.

We all are still working on this.

Well, Eiji, it was super great speaking with you about just English learning.

I know people who are looking to improve, I think they will get there.

So I would love to hear from the listeners and the viewers hear what they have been doing right and what they feel works for them.

And hopefully, we’ll continue a little bit more about, talking a little bit more about English next time.

Alright, alright we’ll see you soon.