Great Fruit part 1

  Time flies. The end of the Yale summer program is coming soon, so now I want to look back to my exotic experience and to think about what I learned. I can come up with two important things I learned here.

  First, pronunciation.

 

In this program, there were many students from different countries, so I could get many opportunities to talk with them. I decided to talk with foreigners as much as possible, but I didn’t notice that I had a big problem. In the first class of our pronunciation class, my friend pointed out.

“Your pronunciation of “R” is strange, but it is common because Japanese don’t have the pronunciation like “R”.”

  He was kind enough to teach me how to pronounce “R” and often pointed out my mistakes. My pronunciation teacher, Drew, also helped me.

  “Culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture……”

  “Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday………”

Drew demanded me to repeat same words showing correct examples himself. I looked extremely carefully at the movement of his mouth and tongue and struggled to reform mine. However, my mouth and tongue were as hard as my grandmother’s shoulder. Although I had trouble in many words and often repeated and repeated, he was tolerant enough to teach me again and again.

  Outside of the class, I also began to pay attention to my pronunciation

  ‘’I want to go to drink water because I am sarsty. No! I am thirsty.’

  Thanks to my friends and teachers, I could understand how to pronounce English correctly like natives. However, still not enough, so I will continue to study English in Japan paying attention to my pronunciation. This is the one of the greatest fruits in this program.  (to be continued....)