English homework

Today is a rainy day. Last Sunday, I watched a movie. The movie title is "The Bucket List". I bought an English grammar workbook for junior high school student after the movie. I started to use the workbook.

 

A lot of Japanese people start to study English from junior high school. (Today, some elementary schools have started to teach English conversation classes.) Some books say “We got enough English conversation skill in the junior high school program. English conversation requires only the grammar level.”  However, Many Japanese people don't think so. We can't understand English conversation, and we can't speak in English. We are confused,  because we don't know many words, and we don't know how to change our own thinking in Japanese into short sentences in English. When we were as school, we learned to translate from English to Japanese, and from Japanese to English. Now I notice that the Japanese sentences are special and comical. We don't use those sentences in Japanese conversation in our life. So, we feel English is cryptic. We freeze when someone talks to us in English.

 

Now, I understand a few emotions in English sentences. However, It is not enough.

 

pg / May 20, 2008