BGM: Paul Weller - The Changingman
Today I worked late. This morning I went to the library to borrow Yasuhiro Shirai's "The Science of learning foreign languages". Me, recently I started attending the online meeting on ZOOM about learning English via Facebook, and also joining in the English conversation class to improve my English (which is my second language). And this book suggests me a lot as an important adviser. How can I learn English more effectively? And how can I speak it more fluently? Indeed, in Japan there are various manuals which teach us their ways of learning so I wonder what I should choose (some of them tell us as "Don't study English", "Three words are enough to communicate", and "Listen to English as shower"). Of course, you can laugh at these phenomenon of "flooding" methods of learning English as nonsense. But I guess that some of them are actually effective for someone else's learning. That makes me impress that learning English must be an endless journey (we Japanese say it as a "pond").
This Yasuhiro Shirai's book describes how we can learn English more effectively apart actually from those irrational methods. The discussions in this is really steady therefore I felt the author's smartness and honesty. The conclusion might be "looking at every learner's characteristic, and choosing the better way to learn by concerning that character in a scientific way. Those are important". We shouldn't learn it forcefully as "Anyway, You should do inputting" or "No, Output, output, output!", but concerning what is good at doing for them. And from there, we should think about how to learn with seeing one's skill. Me, it is really grateful because recently I have thought that "Should I do inputting more by reading paperbacks or watching news?" and "Or I should do outputting as I am doing now by using my memo pad?". By the way, I guess that the relationship between inputting and outputting is difficult to be separated. I guess it is more interactive.
Me, I am enjoying communication in English in a really loose way. And also, I am doing outputting by my memo pad and journal. So I am never doing any scientific learning. Therefore it is really a good chance for me to think what kind of method can fit me. By the way, as this book also tells us about this a little, why the people consider the ones who speak English fluently as smart? In this country, I feel the pressure of the ideas as "I wanna speak English" and "I must speak English" are really forceful. Me, sometimes I am said by a co-worker as "You must be smart because you speak English" (of course, it might be able to come from irony). It sounds weird. Basically, I think that steady learning would enable you to speak any foreign languages. So I think "learning must not end as a waste of time or effort" or "Efforts with sweat won't tell you a lie".
Doing efforts steadily, I am feeling how I am improving myself with making my skills higher little by little in myself. And also feeling love to myself who is certainly going forward... This is just from my opinion or my experiences, I believe that "steady efforts" and "building self-love" are the key to improve our skill of foreign languages. In other words, For me learning English (or foreign languages) means changing myself through communication. It means "growing up" and "getting mature"... Oh, I am saying too big story. In that way. I might be able to say that I always try to concern how I am improving myself through various activities. Quitting alcohol, reading, doing my work... Always I face to myself, and step forward. In Japanese, we say that "go forward three steps, and backward two steps every day" with "muddy" and "earthy" efforts. And, I am still going forward, or rolling on.
