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Hello, my name is Daiki. I’m a junior student in a University in Japan. My majors are Communication and Linguistics. I believe that everyone’s dreams can come true, if each person makes an effort. I’d like to talk about my experience. When I was a junior high school student, I had one dream. This dream was to be able to speak English like native speakers. Do you think this dream is too big to come true? Actually, I thought it was so big for me…
We Japanese start learning English from junior high school. I thought,” If I could speak and understand English fully, I might enjoy a lot of movies without Japanese subtitles”. I wasn’t able to speak and understand English during my junior high school life. However, my turning point came when I was a 16-years old high school student; my school invited a couple of exchange students around the world. I was 16; one Germany student joined my class. He couldn’t speak Japanese well, so I decided to work as his interpreter. I always wrote notebooks in two languages, English and Japanese. When we took Kendo classes, I translated traditional sport words, for example suriashi as ‘kendo step’, shinai as ‘bamboo sword’ and so on. To improve my accent and pronunciation, what I did was watch a lot of movies, video clips on YouTube, and animations. And, I was talking a lot with foreigners.
Since my campus life started, I’ve been taking a lot of English classes. I practiced grammar and pronunciation every day. Sometimes, I did it with my friends, exchange students, and teachers. At other times, I did it alone. That’s why, some of my friends said “Your accent is like American.”And, when I went to America, I was talking to a casher. The casher said “I thought you were a local person”. I’m very proud of this. What I want to tell you is “just do your best to make your dreams come true! “ Mine did.