Letters from Otaru!

As you know from earlier posts, I had a part-time job teaching English while studying in Japan. I tutored at a private, after school English club called Excel English Club. I became quite close with the students and the owner/director, Ryoko. Ryoko began her career as an high school English teacher in Japan but now runs Excel English Club from her home. She has students ranging in age from 3 to adult. I was very fortunate to become a tutor at her club and made a lot of great memories with the students. On my return visit to Japan in June 2011, I was able to visit all of the students and even went out to eat with their families one evening. Ryoko's school has a great website http://www.excel-english.net/. You can find a few pictures of the students and me!




As part of the elementary student's English lessons, each lesson we started with a diary writing assignment. The students would draw a picture at home, and then when they came to the class we would think of 3 sentences to describe each student's drawing. Today I had 3 individually addressed envelopes from Otaru, Japan! Yuna, Teruki, and Kyeong each sent me a letter containing a special drawings and sentences just for me. Teruki is a 6 year old boy and Teruki and Kyeong are both 7 year old girls. Ryoko emailed me to give me a heads up that I should have some special mail from Japan but I couldn't have been more happy to open each of their letters.

The Japanese school system introduces English around age 10 to all of its students in public schools. Because many parents -and most Japanese- realize the importance of English, it's becoming more popular for parents to expose their children to some English before the school. Many people have asked me if Japanese struggle with or don't really speak English at all. From my personal experience, I would say it was rare to find someone who could communicate fluently in English. After studying Japanese, I understand how extremely challenging the sounds, accents, and characters are. News flash for native English speakers: English as a second language isn't all that easy. If you think about it, we have so many special spellings and suffix changes for specific words that don't follow a rule. Example: _________ can't think of one now but there are many! In conclusion, Americans should learn a second language.