Recently, I strongly feel that the day when I leave here is comming. I already said good - bye to a couple of my friends. Once I think that I may not be able to meet him/her again, I feel very sad. And I realize that friends or people who are close to me are really precious.
As a reflection of my studying abroad in Hawaii, I will write things about what I have learned in Hawaii in this time.
The biggest thing which I grabed in Hawaii is, I suppose, to be good at socializing with new people and being active, not English skills. You know, in Hawaii, there are so many Japanese people. Besides, in HELP, the number of Japanese students reaches to eighty percent. This situation was predictable since here is Hawaii, however, I didn't expect such holy pile of Japanese. So, it was almost impossible to make foreign friends if we don't try to make foreign friends.
That's why I can be (a little) active and good at meeting new people and socializing with them.
As for English skills, I don't think that studying abroad is the best way to learn. If someone just only wants to get high score in TOEIC, TOEFL or these kind of tests, (in my POOR opinion,) memorizing impractical vocab for TOEIC and TOEFL and doing dictation for listening is the most effective way since we don't really talk about topics which we have to use difficult vocab and grammer in real life.
But I feel that my super poor speaking and listening skills were kinda improved thanks to HELP and daily life in Hawaii. On the other hand, I realize I need to study more to be able to speak fruently. One of my friend said "Honestly it is hassle to speak slowly since I usually speak faster." I think that we usually meet people who are belonged to international something. Basically they are used to speak slowly for international students and social. Yet I feel diffirent for other, usual students. They are sometimes very cold with international students since I sometimes can't completely catch up with their usual conversation. They are not interested in international students, for them, international students are just troublesome.
Thank you so much for sharing, Naoko. I think there are people who are not interested in cultural differences and they are usually very narrow minded and arrogant since they lack of understanding in other cultures. They probably have never left their countries. We are different because we embrace differences and we are learning to have global perspectives. Keep traveling and I think one day you will become great without having to worry about the way you speak English because you will be the person who have the knowledge in many areas rather than just being able to speak English but not know anything.
ReplyDeleteGood luck Naoko! :)