2017-02-23 04:07 Let's keep writing!
Y (Kuma's owner)
I have been writing this blog for improving my English. It started on 1st of January, 2016. What I have been writing were about my cats, wild birds, puzzles and other desultory topics. The Japanese language does not have a word equivalent to "the" therefore I have been making many mistakes related to "the." Luckily or unluckily, I have friends who have an excellent imagination that can guess what I want to say. They can understand even if I forget to use "the" in the sentences. I know that it's awkward to point out when I say something wrong grammatically every time. They are not my English teacher, I cannot expect them to correct my English. If they can understand the meaning of what I said, they wouldn't tell me the mistakes that I made. People ask me only when they cannot understand what I said. It's very difficult noticing my own mistakes, you know. This is one of my issues. I wonder if I could have a gilded robot that is in the movie "Star Wars", he is talkative and good for correcting my mistakes, I guess.
Another issue of my English is that I don't know the differences in the delicate meaning of words. I'm still unsure of the difference between "large" and "big." I think I may use the wrong expression in the bad situation and I might be misunderstood.
I don't like grammar but I have to learn. One of my Japanese friends who has been living in Australia for a long time said to me that I can live well in Australia with the knowledge of English that I already have now. Well, I know I'm not going to be a novelist but I want to learn, I want to write English like my Aussie friends do. So, I'm not going to stop writing my blog.
One day, I read a blog that was written by a man who lives in New Zealand. I don't know his nationality but he seems not be Japanese. His blog is written in Japanese, it was amazing that his Japanese is excellent like a native speaker of Japanese. I wonder how he has learnt Japanese? I had been working in American companies when I was in Japan. I had some colleagues from different nationalities and they were all born and grew up in Japan but no one could write Japanese like the guy who lives in New Zealand. On his latest blog, he wrote when he started the blog about ten years ago, he spent a week to finish writing a half page of Word.
Then I thought, I should spend more time to finish writing. Usually, I write quickly, maybe I write too quickly. I must write more carefully.
In addition, I must check the mistakes I have written otherwise I will write the same mistakes again and again.
Reading books is also important. I can learn new expressions from them. During these past three years, the best book to me was "Jasper Jones." It's nice to come across the good books. I have a habit to read books that I like several times and it helps remembering new words and expressions.
My strong point is not giving up easily, my weak point is I don't know when to give up. If I give up, that means improving my English writing skills also stops. I won't stop it until I'm able to write good English. Let's keep writing!
Oh, I almost forgot! In the end, I should say I spent about 100 minutes for finishing this blog.