My name is Megumi Iwasaki and
I am Japanese. I came here one
and a half years ago. Now I can speak English a little. But
when I came
here I couldn't speak English. I must say that I studied English
for
more than six years in Japan. Almost all Japanese study English
in
junior and senior high school. So now you may want to ask why
Japanese
people cannot speak English very well. My reply is that we
did not study
how to speak. We studied only grammar. The biggest problem
is pronunciation. The Japanese language has five vowels and almost
the same
number of consonants as in English, but in Japanese each vowel
has only
ONE sound. It means Japanese has few sounds, and English has
many
sounds. We cannot pronounce some English words that have "r". "v", "w" and "th".
The word "wool" cannot
be understood by Americans. Because we
spend six years with the wrong pronunciation, it makes the
problem of
correction even worse! We have another problem. Even though we study
English for six years, we
do not have the chance to practice the language. We don't use
it in our
lives especially after graduate school. This means we soon
forget our
English.
There has been a change in the teaching of
English in Japan. They find
that conversation skills are more important. I don't think
the change is
enough to get good skills, but it is a good change.
The last thing I want to say is about the characteristics
of the
Japanese people. Almost all Japanese are shy, and they have
a tendency
to speak with restraint and in a modest way. So, if you have
a chance to
talk with Japanese people, please speak slowly and pay special
attention
to "r" "v" "w" and "th"
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