So, 9 years have passed since I posted my last article in this blog.
I was still in Kawagoe, a beautiful old city in Japan, and my kids were almost all babies then. Since then, I worked in Vietnam, Egypt, and Hungary. And my kids are 12 and 10 years old now.
I haven't spent any time in English speaking countries, but I have been learning English by myself. I started writing my to-do list in English some years after that, and I created Google Alert and Google Scholar alert with English key words such as "Self- directed learning" or "Second language acquisition".
I have read all the titles of those articles at least, and I sometimes clicked the links in those alerts, and read the abstract and the conclusion. When I found the abstracts really interesting, I roughly read through the articles. Always, I had some sentences that I couldn't understand completely, but I didn't care.
One of the biggest change was brought by kindle I bought some years ago. I was really surprised that I can read English books from all over the world without paying for any postage. And what is more, it had dictionaries with which I can see the meaning just a second later I tapped on unfamiliar words.
First, I read books for teen agers such as "the hunger games" series or "twilight saga" series. They were typical page turners and I really enjoyed reading them. And the experience reading those books gave me confidence to read more professional books. Now I am reading books written by educators such as "the Innovator's mindset" or "Teach like a pirates".
I guess both of Google and Kindle really helped me to improve my English reading skill.
However, I am still struggling in writing in English. The biggest reason is that I didn't have any chance to write in English in my daily life. That is the reason I started to repost again in this blog. I hope it will work this time.
I was still in Kawagoe, a beautiful old city in Japan, and my kids were almost all babies then. Since then, I worked in Vietnam, Egypt, and Hungary. And my kids are 12 and 10 years old now.
I haven't spent any time in English speaking countries, but I have been learning English by myself. I started writing my to-do list in English some years after that, and I created Google Alert and Google Scholar alert with English key words such as "Self- directed learning" or "Second language acquisition".
I have read all the titles of those articles at least, and I sometimes clicked the links in those alerts, and read the abstract and the conclusion. When I found the abstracts really interesting, I roughly read through the articles. Always, I had some sentences that I couldn't understand completely, but I didn't care.
One of the biggest change was brought by kindle I bought some years ago. I was really surprised that I can read English books from all over the world without paying for any postage. And what is more, it had dictionaries with which I can see the meaning just a second later I tapped on unfamiliar words.
First, I read books for teen agers such as "the hunger games" series or "twilight saga" series. They were typical page turners and I really enjoyed reading them. And the experience reading those books gave me confidence to read more professional books. Now I am reading books written by educators such as "the Innovator's mindset" or "Teach like a pirates".
I guess both of Google and Kindle really helped me to improve my English reading skill.
However, I am still struggling in writing in English. The biggest reason is that I didn't have any chance to write in English in my daily life. That is the reason I started to repost again in this blog. I hope it will work this time.
