The other day I had the most exciting student I believed I would every have, and maybe the last. He was exploding with energy and couldn’t sit down for five seconds. At first I thought he would be too much to handle, the energy was literally bouncing off the walls! But through his exploding energy he showed me he was a highly intelligent and successful business man.
Keeping to a Lesson plan from the curriculum was very challenging as he always wanted to speak and stray from the topic, so I went with the flow. But he asked me a very important question; “Do I have any tips to help improve my English and any evidence to back it up?” This is a great question and I found it a bit hard to answer at first, but I remember what a good friend said to me; “Simon all you need is these three tips and you will be speak Japanese before you know it!”
Here they are;
- Use Japanese (English) in everyday conversation!
- Study, even if your feel tired, once the bad habits start to wriggle their way in it will be difficult to cut them out.
- Always keep studying, even if you think you are good and people say you are. Because you are not! If you get the idea that you are good then you will stay at your current level for the rest of your life!
These tips should be a rule of thumb for any person learning a language, Japanese, English or any nationality! If you use these three rules when trying to learn a language you will never fail. Just because we believe we are at a good level, yes some people say we are, it doesn’t mean we actually are. So my advice was to keep studying, make it a hobby and live the rest of your life learning and speaking English, never give up! It’s working for me and I bet it will work for any Japanese student.
Simon,
Those are simple yet ideal tips for studying any language. I’ll be spreading your tips to my students, as well as applying them to my own Japanese studies!
Edward
Great advice, Simon!! I might even take it myself! Nobody ever tells me my Japanese is good, but I guess I should study anyway!!!