By the way, my name is Naomi and I have been struggling with learning English in Australia for about 8 years. I remember, when I was a student in Japan, my eyes would close as soon as someone would try to teach me English. I found it so boring!
To my ears, it sounded like an alien language. I hated remembering all those alien words and to me learning English grammar was completely confusing. In Japanese, emphasis and accent basically do not exist.
Firstly, I learnt we have to copy English (in our mind) as soon as someone else says it. Whoever is in front of you, pretend to be that person talking.
I would not even try to pronounce sounds like Th, W, R, V, B and so on, I thought they were impossible for me to learn. As you can guess, I couldn’t enjoy at all learning English in Japan.
When I first came to Australia, it was difficult for me but after a while I found I could enjoy learning English, I am writing this journal to share my story and to help encourage others to enjoy learning English like I learned to do.
Firstly, I learned we have to copy English (in our mind) as soon as someone else says it. Whoever is in front of you, pretend to be that person talking. I know, it is not easy. Ideally, we should be like a baby, Observing people in front of us, like we would do with our mother and recognise what she is saying then try to say exactly the same thing if we can.
Of course, we are not children anymore, so this way is hard for us, but at least we should have a good ear when listening to English. With this in mind, I decided to actively listen to English every day.
- Naomi K
