Moving to Fiji to learn English is, to put it bluntly, stupid. Probably learning English was only part of her motivation, and she just wanted out of Japan.

The fastest way for her to improve would have been for her to move in with you.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Quote:To be honest, I don't mean to be an ass or anything like this, but if people truly want to learn a language. They will want to spend every bit of time in the language if possible.

This isn't true for everyone; of course you have to put in a certain level of effort, but I never wanted (nor do I want now) to spend every bit of time in Japanese. I like speaking and reading my native language as well; I would not want to be in a situation where I had no access to English.

No problem with that. But just saying that, if you put more time, more effort,srsing,etc,etc. You'll get the results faster in the language then doing stuff in your native-language.
For me I just try to substitute my media/reading to japanese. I usual use English when I have to apply for jobs,go outside,etc. Obviously I can't cut it out 100%, but I believe it's just a matter of spending more time in the language to become fluent in it.

esgrove Wrote:She got a pilot's license and got certified in scuba diving. I also think she may have gotten cosmetic surgery. But after over 9 months of living in Fiji, she knows not one word more of English.

How did she get her pilot's license not being able to speak English? I got my license 15 years ago and at the time only 50% of those who took the written portion of the test passed. This is not even taking into account you have to talk to the tower in English. Not an easy task even for native speaker student pilots while trying to scan the instruments and fly the plane.

Esgrove, sorry to hear it didn't work out. Out of interest, did you try the advice any of us gave? Kind of spooky how my Titanic analogy played out though.

To change the direction of the discussion: I did make subs2srs cards for my wife of her favorite show. She did not bother to even try to learn them. Nor did she put the audio on her iPod. There's that nagging feeling that because it was done for free, there's no appreciation for how effective it can be.

For future reference, don't be afraid to sell your service or advice. It may feel like you're ripping people off, but you're playing to a human condition. People respond better when the tutoring is bought, personalized, and compared to others in a competitive way.

Pretty sure there's more than a little competition on this forum when it comes to stats or accomplishments, no? Hasn't that pushed some of us to do more?

This is such a common story... it's actually sad. People are wasting millions and millions of dollars (plus time) thinking that going to a foreign country will make them fluent. I know I am preaching to the converted here, but a strong passive understanding of the language is needed to make the most of any stay overseas...

Actually, I think if you have enough savings where you can just spend your time interacting with the people, going overseas is the best way to acquire language. The Japanese I meet with the most natural English tend to have spent a year doing homestay in Australia or Canada.

I think the best way to teach someone a language, is basically to be a personal pimsleur for them for an hour or so a few times a week. During that hour, through constant listening, questioning, responding and translating, the student slowly builds up a small core vocabulary and gains an understanding of how to structure their thoughts in the foreign language. All the while, being strict about pronounciation and offering explanation on how to make certain sounds if necessary. Depending on the student some simple grammar explanation in varying amounts of detail can be useful. In my opinion, to be a good teacher, you absolutely have to be able to communicate in the students native language. Basically the three things that matter in teaching are:
1. how well you know the subject matter (english)
2. how well you can communicate (for japanese students, how well you can communicate in Japanese)
3. and experience (of what needs to be taught, answers to specific questions, knowing your students)

I think I could get a small group of japanese kids to something resembling fluency in 6 months to a year. This is what i'd do.

1. Tutor them in small groups pimsleur style for an hour a day. This might involve occasional game playing.

2. Once I'm satisfied they can understand most of what I'm saying and can respond to all my english instructions, are asking questions in english, are communicating together in english with good pronounciation. Basically if I can judge that they are understanding sentences in real time based on word by word meaning (rather than surface level memorization), and are able to construct origional sentences of reasonable complexity albeit slowly, then I would progress to telling short stories.

3. Let them watch disney movies.

4. Teach them the alphabet/phonics

5. Get the students reading.

6. Start setting writing tasks.

bodhisamaya Wrote:Actually, I think if you have enough savings where you can just spend your time interacting with the people, going overseas is the best way to acquire language. The Japanese I meet with the most natural English tend to have spent a year doing homestay in Australia or Canada.

I disagree, I have met some people with great English that have spent time overseas, but I don't think it is due to the fact they were in Australia, or wherever, it was due to the work and time spent studying.

RTK won't work at all for this. It was designed by English speakers for English speakers.

thegeelonghellswan Wrote:

bodhisamaya Wrote:Actually, I think if you have enough savings where you can just spend your time interacting with the people, going overseas is the best way to acquire language. The Japanese I meet with the most natural English tend to have spent a year doing homestay in Australia or Canada.

I disagree, I have met some people with great English that have spent time overseas, but I don't think it is due to the fact they were in Australia, or wherever, it was due to the work and time spent studying.

I disagree with your disagreement. Bar one person I met in Japan- the only Japanese people I met in Japan who speak what I consider very good English spent at least a year abroad. It makes a massive difference, and it made a massive difference in my Japanese to spend 15 months in Japan. Massive.

Of course I was studying every day as well, but I wouldn't be nearly as far in my speaking if I hadn't been in Japan.

The fiji story is one of someone who put themself in what we like to term a gaijin-bubble. If she had got out there and met English speakers and made friends with them, she'd be telling a different story.

I know I'm not an established poster or anything, but I wanted to share my thoughts on this - the whole year abroad thing.

I think if you have some sort of background in the language at all (beyond what they make you), then it makes it easier to utilize that year abroad instead of going over there with minimal learning it will be easier to learn the language.

(Not sure if that makes sense...I just woke up since I work night shift.)

thegeelonghellswan Wrote:This is such a common story... it's actually sad. People are wasting millions and millions of dollars (plus time) thinking that going to a foreign country will make them fluent. I know I am preaching to the converted here, but a strong passive understanding of the language is needed to make the most of any stay overseas...

In your assumption you forgot a minor detail: attitude towards learning. If somebody slacks off there is just no way such trip will help them. On the other hand if you really want to learn or have to do it (no other choice or you die from hunger) such trip will be a huge help.

thurd Wrote:

thegeelonghellswan Wrote:This is such a common story... it's actually sad. People are wasting millions and millions of dollars (plus time) thinking that going to a foreign country will make them fluent. I know I am preaching to the converted here, but a strong passive understanding of the language is needed to make the most of any stay overseas...

In your assumption you forgot a minor detail: attitude towards learning. If somebody slacks off there is just no way such trip will help them. On the other hand if you really want to learn or have to do it (no other choice or you die from hunger) such trip will be a huge help.

I have met people who have come from Korea to Aus to study English and have barely progressed over the year they spent here. They want to get jobs as airline stewards or bankers, jobs that require English, they had the motivation to move to another country, work a crappy job (eg. cleaner, waiting) and pay thousands of dollars at English schools and still barely progress. I don't think these people are slackers, but I think they are using bad methods and hold the belief that English is really, really hard.

@Captal

I'm not saying don't go overseas, I'm saying go when you have a base level of proficiency.

I think a lot of the crappy English speakers you have met, but not noted due to their crap-ness could very well have spent time overseas as well. You don't know.

Even you admit that you had to study everyday.

In regards to escaping from a native language bubble (eg. japanese only hanging with japanese etc); how are you supposed to do this if you don't even know fundamentals? Nobody in Australia wants to talk to some random Asian that they don't know from a bar of soap and who can't even speak beyond basic greetings.

You have a few choices:

Pay people to speak with you.

Study at home and get to a reasonable level before moving overseas. Flourish.

Move overseas and study at home till you get to a level where you can start interacting with natives, but with the added expense and stress of doing it in a foreign country, and being forced to output extremely early.

About every Japanese person has had several years of English in junior high and high school. Their underlying knowledge of English is well established enough for a trip overseas (unless many years have passed since they graduated and they haven't been studying at all).

At some point, Japanese people have to stop reading textbooks and get out there and use it. But, it does seem that those who are fairly outgoing really do get the most out of that time abroad. It's easy to get trapped speaking only to other speakers of your native language.

Gotta agree with captal as well - almost every very good speaker of English I've met here has spent time abroad. A year or so really seems to do wonders for most people.

Gotta second what others are saying here. Any Japanese adult who progressed through highschol with reasonable grades should know enough English to flourish in a foreign country and learn a lot unless they get stuck in a gaijin bubble. On the other hand, the Japanese people I know who have never lived abroad never develope natural English no matter how long they have studied. Living abroad forces a level of immersion that (let's face it) most people will never simulate while living in their home country. Japanese people tend to be afraid of native materials. I know plenty of people who know easily enough English to use native materials yet still stick to dumbed-down English newspapers, graded readers refuse to watch unsubtitled videos etc.

Then there's all the gaijin who come here with almost no knowledge and learn almost nothing, live in a bubble and after 3 years still struggle to pass 3kyuu. I'm talking mostly about english teachers here. Contrast this with exchange students who are generally forced to immerse at least somewhat and the difference is plain to see. Bear in mind most people will not bother with the complicated study routines discussed on this site and will not learn anything unless they get constant exposure and a healthy dose of classroom spoonfeeding.

About my ex-girlfriend:

I appreciate the advice on this forum, but at the time I received it, it was too late to do anything to help. I realize now that her primary issue with English was her attitude. I went out with her for half a year, and I never spoke to her in my native language. During that time she spent thousands of dollars on eikaiwa classes. Even though I was an English teacher and spent a lot of time with her, she would get annoyed if I tried to engage her in English. In addition to never studying on her own, she couldn't even be encouraged to study.

If there was a magic pill that, if taken every day for a year, would make you speak English, she would forget to take it after a week.

Nice girl though. But English is not her destiny.

I'm sure she is a nice girl, and you helped her as much as possible. Unfortunately we can't force people to achieve things. But when they find something they truly want, maybe they'll go for it...

I hear people say "I want to..." quite a lot, but I'm never sure what they mean. I think it's probably just a tentative step in the direction of achievement. I'm slightly embarrassed to say, "I'm learning Japanese", because I know if that were really true (I think it is!) then I would (a) be learning it, not talking about learning it, or (b) be able to speak it, as a result of learning it. One is talking, the other is doing.

It is truly sad that people don't want to learn, even when they say they do. But the best we can do is point them in the direction of the door they want (e.g. "Door to English Fluency"), and hopefully in our lives there will be enough people who care about what's beyond the door...

The "Fruency" door is a bit overcrowded anyway.

we say:
>>Make Katakana illegal and get over here!

esgrove Wrote:Even though I was an English teacher and spent a lot of time with her, she would get annoyed if I tried to engage her in English. In addition to never studying on her own, she couldn't even be encouraged to study.

Her general approach to learning seems consistent and logical to me, even though in this case... it didn't work at all!

She sounds like she was good at efficiently compartmentalizing her interests so that they didn't interfere with one another. She regularly paid for and went to eikaiwa classes. She wanted that time to be for English, and for her time with you to be for something else.

She succeeded in acquiring skills in scuba diving and in piloting. I'm sure she didn't immerse herself in a scuba or piloting world, surrounding herself with only other scuba and flight enthusiasts, and speaking about scuba and flying with her significant other. Probably she took her scuba course seriously, and when she was taking scuba lessons, that's what she did, and when she wasn't taking lessons, it was a topic that was ignored. Same with flying.

It doesn't sound entirely unreasonable, as this is how most all study topics are taught by instructors, and learned by students.

captal Wrote:Bar one person I met in Japan- the only Japanese people I met in Japan who speak what I consider very good English spent at least a year abroad.

I know that this is an internet forum and all that, and it shouldn't be taken too too seriously, but the fact remains that your friends are not a representative sample. (This goes also for the people arguing for the other side)

Let's imagine that you know two hundred people in Japan who speak or are studying English--and you know roughly how good their English is and whether or not they lived abroad.

I don't think you know two hundred people in Japan who also are English speakers. But, even if you did know, two hundred people is not really enough to tell you accurate information. It could be that of those two hundred people, most of the people who are good at English lived abroad. But, we really can't get any good information out of that fact; the percent error is too high because the sample size isn't big enough.

Second, the sample is biased because it only includes people you know. The people are not randomly chosen out of the population of Japan, they're people you know. They're filtered through the channels in which they could end up meeting you. So, even if the sample size was big enough (maybe more than 1000 people), it still would be useless information because the sample is biased anyway.

It so happens that three of the five Japanese people I know with really really great English never lived abroad--but my anecdotal evidence is just as useless as yours.

Many here seem to be native English speakers, which means that not many of you have actually gone trough the hurdle of learning English. Which makes it really difficulty for native English speakers to understand the problems non natives might have with the language.

Firstly I could say that teaching English alphabet for someone who is complete beginner in English as waste of time. Mainly because its has nothing which japanese person can relate to.

Its probably a lot easier to teach them trough some sort of customized romaji alphabet or Finnish alphabet. Mainly because these are far more closer to the way hiraganas are spelled.

It makes remembering the words a lot easier (and more fun) when you can say:
"Haha funny they write word "Chinese" Chinese but the pronounce it like chainiis"

Yes you crazy English natives, you spell words differently from how you write it and it sometimes makes learning English a ****.

------------

As for my personal experience on learning English, I could say that reading and writing are far more important skills for a beginner than speaking. Of course speaking should not be neglected but the focus should first be on getting the hang of basic vocabulary and grammar trough writing and reading.

On my first 2 years in learning English we learned speaking mainly trough reading trough a list of words with a teacher (which where often in next vocabulary exam) and repeating all the words after the teacher. We also started to read out pre-made conversations and translating them. After finishing the pre-made conversation the teacher would take a note on some of the harder words and explaining how they are pronounced.

The funny thing in English is that when you learn how few words are spelled you can somewhat guess how some other words that are written similar are spelled. For example if you know how Aeroplane is spelled you can probably spell Aerosol correctly as well.

We learned English alphabet like after 4 years of studying the language, and it was mainly to improve our spelling. So we did not even learn English alphabet to read and write English but to improve our spoken English.

English teacher should always accept both UK and US English, as remembering the US/UK version of the word is far better than not remembering it at all.

Seiska Wrote:Many here seem to be native English speakers, which means that not many of you have actually gone trough the hurdle of learning English. Which makes it really difficulty for native English speakers to understand the problems non natives might have with the language.

Firstly I could say that teaching English alphabet for someone who is complete beginner in English as waste of time. Mainly because its has nothing which japanese person can relate to.

Its probably a lot easier to teach them trough some sort of customized romaji alphabet or Finnish alphabet. Mainly because these are far more closer to the way hiraganas are spelled.

It makes remembering the words a lot easier (and more fun) when you can say:
"Haha funny they write word "Chinese" Chinese but the pronounce it like chainiis"

Yes you crazy English natives, you spell words differently from how you write it and it sometimes makes learning English a ****.

------------

As for my personal experience on learning English, I could say that reading and writing are far more important skills for a beginner than speaking. Of course speaking should not be neglected but the focus should first be on getting the hang of basic vocabulary and grammar trough writing and reading.

On my first 2 years in learning English we learned speaking mainly trough reading trough a list of words with a teacher (which where often in next vocabulary exam) and repeating all the words after the teacher. We also started to read out pre-made conversations and translating them. After finishing the pre-made conversation the teacher would take a note on some of the harder words and explaining how they are pronounced.

The funny thing in English is that when you learn how few words are spelled you can somewhat guess how some other words that are written similar are spelled. For example if you know how Aeroplane is spelled you can probably spell Aerosol correctly as well.

We learned English alphabet like after 4 years of studying the language, and it was mainly to improve our spelling. So we did not even learn English alphabet to read and write English but to improve our spoken English.

English teacher should always accept both UK and US English, as remembering the US/UK version of the word is far better than not remembering it at all.

I wouldn't think that learning the alphabet would be much of a hurdle for a Japanese person anyway. They already know Romaji. Which means they pretty much already know the characters. I suppose you mean learning how to sound out each individual character? In which case being able to do that is almost useless in the first place due to how the language doesn't like to follow its own rules.

Although I may not be understanding where the problem is being a native speaker myself.

I must say the more I learn Japanese the more I appreciate how the language strives to follow its rules. It makes me pity those learning english...

Let me get this clear..

Learning alphabet is good, but learning it the way its tough to those native to English is bad. Natives probably wont notice but in English there's two or more ways to pronounce A
A = A
A = EI
Examples: Car, Baby

same goes with some other letters like U
Under
Rudolf

This is way different from Japanese ways to pronounce letters.

Alphabets should be learned the way that they could easily write their own native language with it and bossily add all the remaining letters to it as well and make modify familiar words with them to see how they actually work:
Desullar, Desut, Desuzz etc etc.

This allows them to write what they hear. For example you might say write: Aeroplane, but they will write eeroplain because that is what they hear. Now when they see that its written Aeroplane they will notice the spelling and writing differ, and thus memorize them.

I sure hope they don't teach romaji to japanese people trough some syllable memorization e.g:　か = KA き = KI く = KU け = KE こ = KO etc. They should focus on single letters instead, and how they work with the other letters as thats how alphabets work.


Then no wonder they are having hard time with other languages. Alphabets just don't work that way.

English is pretty easy language to learn, but hard language to master (This goes with most languages). English language is pretty logical when it comes to words themselves, as its pretty easy to guess which spelling is used based on the letters and use the spellings you have already learned from other words.

e.g: (Cha of challenge, Chair, Chariot Champion - ing of Fighting, Grinding, Powering - ish of extinguish, vanquish, perish - Eu of Euro, Euthanasia, eulogy )

Just look at Icelandic its like random shitstorm of letters!

I'd argue that English is an extremely illogical language and is difficult because of that.

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?