2017-02-28 08:42 Slow and steady wins the race
Y (Kuma's owner)
I've been here in Australia for more than five years. Some Japanese people say that if I've been living in an English language country I must be good at English. However, I'm not as good at English as other people think. It's not easy to acquire foreign language ability, especially for adults.
Generally speaking, I heard that Japanese are good at writing, and are not good at hearing and speaking. I'm also not good at hearing and speaking. Unfortunately, I'm not talkative and even in Japanese, I don't talk much. I don't have much will to talk, so the most difficult part of improving English for me is speaking. I cannot change my character, if I could have friends who have the same interests or hobbies, I think I can talk a lot more than usual.
Concerning listening to English, I use movies. I bought DVDs and I see movies almost every night and see the same movies again and again. It depends on movies, some movies are easy to catch the words and some of them are difficult. Generally, old movies are easy to listen to.
Seeing the same movie many times sometimes works for improving listening ability. At first, I couldn't catch the lines at all, and gradually I was able to get some words one by one with repetition. The other merit of seeing movies is I can use the subtitles, it's really helpful.
I always encourage myself and say " Slow and steady wins the race."