I had my English conversation class this evening. I attend yhe class every Tuesday. It's a small class, only three students and the American teacher.
Sometimes, I lose my motivation to keep going with English learning. I guess I feel a bit tired today with my music tasks. At the class, I felt like I couldn't find any reason to continue to learn English. I don't have any definite plan to go abroad right now. I don't have any English related job right now..... Yes I sometimes write something in English as I'm doing now. But what about speaking? Except the English class, I don't have any chance to speak English in my daily life. So why shoud I do it? Perhaps I feel afraid of forgetting everything I learned up to now if I stop learning it. Perhaps I feel afraid of getting old and cannot remember anything. Or what?
After getting home, I tried to remember my start point of learning English seriously when I was 39 years old.
I first studied abroad when I was 39 years old in Vancouver, Canada.
I had already been married for 10 years then. I didn't have a job at that time. I quit my full time job a few years after the marriage and became a full time housewife, then after a while I started doing some volunteer work sometimes.
I remember one day my husband came home in January or so and told me that his salary would be going down 30 % in coming April. It was a lot. We had to figure it out. It was perhaps a kind of insane but I thought this way, "OK, now it's time for me to work full time again, starting from April. Then I won't be able to have a long vacation any more..... so now might be my last time having a long time off? One of my dreams since my childhood is going abroad and stay there for a while, not on a trip but attending an ESL school and stay at a local people's house. Why not doing it right now? It might be my last chance to make it true!" Was I crazy? maybe......! Then I started to do my research about it and found an affordable one-month home stay program. I told mg husband about it. I think I am the luckiest wife in the world because he said yes to my dream right away!
I made it in Vancouver, Canada, in 2001, staying there for a month. My English was a beginner level. So I felt so happy when my English greeting was understood, such as "hello", "thank you", "how are you?". I enjoyed everything there. Staying at a local people's house was exciting although there were both good things and bad things. Attending an ESL school was exciting although some other students laughed at my stupid pronunciation. I was the oldest student in my class. I was the earliest student going to the school in the morning. I just liked the atmosphere of the empty class room. I liked the teachers a lot. After a week or so, I started to take private lessons only focused on pronunciation. My teacher, Andrew, showed me his mouth as he pronounced English words. I tried to mimic him but couldn't do it well. Tried and failed.... but it was always fun!
In the end of my stay, I received my certification of finishing the one-month course with Honorable mention (I didn't know the meaning of "honorable" so had to ask about it to my classmates!). I was so surprised because I thought I was the worst student in my class. I was so glad that the teachers found my hard work meaningful.
In the end of my stay in Canada, I was going to end my English learning after getting back to Japan but my motivation went up so high through this experience. I felt happy with this one-month stay but at the same time I felt so sad that I couldn't communicate very well with people I liked there. I wanted to understand what other people were talking about. I wanted to share my deeper thoughts with others. I wanted to express my opinion in details with many topics. I wanted to express my gratitude to people who were kind to me. I very much wanted to be a better English speaker. I realized it after getting home. I thought that next time I would be a better speaker and wanted to communicate with people in English in much deeper way. I wanted to understand other people deeply, as deep as possible.
My English learning started in this way in 2001.
It's been 13 years already! Time flies!
As I'm writing this.... now I remember how much I wanted to learn English.
I think I want to continue a little bit more! Everything is made by baby steps, little by little. I don't know where I'm going with this learning but I have already made a lot of English speaking friends through this learning. So why not keep going? Yes!
It's time to go to bed now.
Good night from Osaka, Japan!!!
