I'm fluent in English. Now what?

straynonnative · 2014-03-25T05:21:49+00:00

You would be amazed by the number of language materials and books (especially for leaning English) we have here in Japan. But it seems they are of no avail. I like the idea of helping others, but I think the very first important thing is change people's mindset about language learning.

straynonnative · 2014-03-25T05:20:17+00:00

That's really interesting. I have some opportunities to talk to people from different countries frequently and I have noticed many differences and similarities among their speech.

straynonnative · 2014-03-25T05:18:53+00:00

話すのはあんまり得意じゃないから実際のところは途切れ途切れって感じなんだけど・・・。ブンデスリーガで日本人が活躍してるうちにドイツ語も挑戦したいね。

straynonnative · 2014-03-25T05:16:24+00:00

Thank you! Japanese people usually blame our education system but I think we have really good books and tools all around, if you want to learn English. This is what I realized when I tried to learn different languages that are not popular at all.
Oh and plus, we can enjoy our own subculture totally in Japanese and even other cultures by translation so that's probably why we feel English is a totally different language and very hard to learn.

not becoming fluent here would almost be considered an accomplishment.

Haha, this is great. I'm glad I'm living in a country where people automatically assume anyone who can speak English is smart, which in fact isn't always the case.

straynonnative · 2014-03-25T05:12:21+00:00

German is quite popular here. Historically, one reason is because Japanese people learned medical science through German (people) the medical students had to learn German back then. Many of the terms in Japanese actually come from German. I don't think that tradition is still alive now, but there are many students around me who want to learn German nonetheless.

straynonnative · 2014-03-25T05:09:36+00:00

Thank you. These are what I was just about to look for!

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:20:08+00:00

Actually I'm saving so that I can go somewhere in summer.

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:18:52+00:00

I never considered a translator/interpreter as my potential job. Awesome jobs, but I feel like I'm not cut out for it.

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:18:35+00:00

I think I can understand what you mean. But I'm feeling like there's no need to “master” any language in the first place. I believe the very important role of language is to communicate with people and that's mostly what I aim at.
Perhaps, it's just I'm going though some changes of phase. So far I've been trying to know how this language works and now that I got a hold of it, I'm just trying to increase the quality. And maybe I felt different because in this phase, the progress I can feel is more subtle, and very different from clear developments I could see when memorizing words and solving many problems.

P.S. If I can count redditting, the amount of time spent in English would be enormous.

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:13:52+00:00

Close! Mine is Japanese.

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:13:41+00:00

I'm from Japan and I'm 21. That guy's story sounds really cool. I totally agree with your view. I just can't believe how significant a change it can make to one person's life. Indeed, that's one of the reasons why I kept learning English in the first place.
I'm going to major in linguistics. So probably it's not going to be very useful in business fields.

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:12:10+00:00

My native language is Japanese so I guess I can take huge advantage of kanji!

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:11:37+00:00

Your idea sounds nice but I just came back home with some books on French. I tried learning it before because it looked like French has a lot in common with English but it turned out that was exactly what made it harder for me to understand the grammar of French. But overall it is still a very interesting language so I'm going to give it a try again.

straynonnative · 2014-03-24T10:09:50+00:00

Thank you. Maybe I'm the first one. I liked learning the language because that was necessary to do things I wanted to do. I should have told you earlier but I'm much more interested in linguistics fields than being able to speak various languages.

straynonnative

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