Some of my friends commented my blog , and now I'm gonna reply it . Sorry for my late...
He commented on this article.
http://capm.seesaa.net/archives/20060917.htmlFirstly , he pointed out he has studied some part of engineering , but a lot of Japanese companies don't expect the students to use the knowledge they studied in the universities. As I mentioned before , the companies usually train the employees , so you don't have to have specific skill to enter the companies .
I heard an interesting story from some of U of T students majoying Finance , so I'll comment this part in next time.
Nextly , he said my writing is easy to understand ( I hope this means my writing is good) , and asked me my level of the conversation .
First of all , his English is incredible . He lived in the US more than 3 years ( in this point , he has the same exprience as "Mogura" ) , and his score of TOEIC is almost perfect and his way of speaking is also very good. Because of this , I 'm very glad to hear from him my English is easy to understand.
By the way , Motoyuki Shibata , who is the professor of Tokyo university majoring English Literature , and also the famous translater , said
" If you wanna speaking English very good , you have to have another personality " ,
and I feel very strongly how real his comment is , after coming here . If you wanna speak English fluently , you have to have another personality . This is absolutely true.
In other words , if you wanna speak English fluently , you have to think everything in English . A lot of Japanese students take one or two seconds to reply something when they are asked something in English . One of my teacher said to me this is one of the most typical responses of Japanese people. Firstly , they think something in Japanese and try to translate it in English ( And they usually make mistakes . They usually creat their original expressions. This is because they "automatically" translate Japanese into English , you know ?) . As long as you do this , it'll take 1 or 2 seconds to response it . This is inevitable , you know ?
The thing is Japanese and English have a totally , totally different structure , and this makes Japanese people bad at English . Spanish , French , German , Italy , or so have the Latin root , right ? So , for them learning English is not so difficult as Japanese people .
Of course , even for them , speaking English is very difficult , especially , pronunciation , but the fluency of them is much , much better than that of Japanese . Some of my friends was praised by his friends because of his fluency , but looking back , his fluency is so terrible . All of my friends who came here to study English from the countries having the Latin root are much better than him in the fluency.
What I try to say is not to embarress him , but to emphasize that , for Japanese , it is so hard to speak English fluently. And one of the reason is the way of thinking and structure is so different form Japanese , you know ?
Even right now , my speaking is so terrible . I think I am thinking everything in English . Sometime , I talk to myself , but even at that time , I definitely use English . And whenever I have a dream at night , I am speaking English . I have a English dream !
Everything is so dominated by English , but my speaking is terrible ... I personally believe if you wanna use English in a business field or something like it , you have to spend more than 6 months living the place where English is used .
In my opinion, this time is shortest . And if you wanna establish your English in such a short time , before going there , you have to prepare studying English more than
6 hours per day at least one year ( though , this suits only for Japanese people ). I studied English very hard before coming here. I think after entering the graduate school , I studied English "at least" 8 hours per day . A lot of classes are taken place in English , and the books I read is almost all ( over 90%) English . But my English is this level , you know ?
Of course , how fast people learn English totally depends on the abilitiy of people , but as far as my concerned , a lot of smart people struggle to learn English . Let me give you an example.
Do you know Oki Matsumoto ? I think everybody agree with his smartness if you know him. He graduated from the Law department of Tokyo university , and , he has a record of the youngest person who get the partner of Goldman Sach . He entered Solomon Brothers after graduating from his university , but according to him , the main reason why he choosed Solomon is learning English . Even for him , it is so difficult to speak English that I force himself to speak English , entering the foreign capital company .
In Japan , a lot of people assume you have to learn English . Some English school crazy about advertizing such a message , you know ?
However, it is really true ? English is very time-comsuming . If you wanna make your English level " enough", you have to spend amazing time to learn it . If you don't do it , you can have a lot of time to do another thing. You could take some qualifications , such as CPA . You could have another important skill , such as , writing some programing . And you can enjoy yourself !
If you wanna make your English enough , you have to compute seriously the cost of learning English and the benefit of learning English , and you should put a lot of energy into that thinking . And if you think it deserves it , you have to be crazy about learning English . This is my idea. What do you think about it ?
