English

Fiance vs fiancee. I always get mix up. Fiance is guy. I have a fiance. I'm a girl. Oh this sounds so ridiculus. Spelling always gave me headache in the past. For the longest time, I couldn't distinguish glass and grass. I think I had trouble with that until eight or so years in my US life. How did I overcome that problem? It was quite easy. GRasses are GReen. Sigh. If I were to teach English in Japan in the future, (which is never,) I'll make sure to teach my students that trick. I still have problem with some other words like peak vs peek, but those I just wing it. And it works.

Foreign language is hard to learn for Japanese. English is no exception. Now that I go to many English forums and sites, I'm amazed at how many other non-English native speakers can use English. Belgians, Indonesians, French, German, Hebrews, etc... Before I always made excuse for my bad English grammar/spellings, but after finding it out, I'm pretty much ashamed. What depressed me more was the fact that most of them I got to know are much younger than me - they are in their high school or college age. Some of them are good enough to proofread whatever I wrote in English.

So, what's the difference? Japanese learn English, too. I thought Japanese students' English grammar is pretty good.

... I guess the difference is English taught in Japan is too focused in "entrance exam grammar." Or maybe I can call it "textbook grammar." They're not really useful in real life. I remember when I was in high school, I had to memorize the entire text in order to do well in the English exams. For me being not good at memory, I almost always had failing grade. What's funny is that in the last exam of high school, an "ability test," I did perfectly well. I did so well that I think I was the third in the entire grade. That was the only exam that didn't require to memorize the textbook.

I don't really know how they teach English in other countries. In European countries, they probably have native English speakers as their teacher. In Japan, too, have native speakers as English teachers, but most of them teach "oral communciation," mainly focused on speaking. (I actually did well on that class.)

If... those foreign teachers actually teach Japanese kids grammar and such, and teach them how to write essays in English (I seriously had problem with that!), maybe overall level of English in Japan would be higher...

Don't give up; keep writing diaries/blogs in English, people!


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