Recently in English Category

    I've been writing a diary in English since Jan. 2003 to make me think something in English. I wanted to put some article here, so I checked my diary, then I found I wrote about English Conversation School pretty much every day. I suppose I was obsessed about it. It's me. Always if I think it's fun, I'm very into it. Now I'm into watching films, so I bought a lot of DVDs from Amazon. Some of them I bought from Amazon.co.uk and some of those don't have any subtitles, I mean English subtitles. Some part of that they have an accent, so I can't get it well though, I can understand what is going on.

    I like to make database. So I decided to make film database, and actually I made it. But normal database is insipid, so I decided to make them with blog, then I can put some comment on. I'm not sure how long I can keep it though, I'd like to keep it for a long time.

    In Japanese, the nuance of "I think he is not coming." and "I do not think he is coming." are slightly different. I believe it's the same in English. The former one is you can also say "I guess he is not coming.", and the latter "I believe he is not coming." I have never lived abroad, so I am not sure whether these difference are correct, but I can feel some of them.

    I occasionally translated an English website into a Japanese one as a volunteer for a few years, then I found a lot of difficulties. One of them was the technical words. It was a website for music, and I knew some words for it, but I did not know enough to write the Japanese articles. So sometimes I had to check some Japanese music websites to find what kind of words were used.

    Translating English into Japanese is not easy because sometimes they include special expressions such as idioms or old sayings, or thoughts with religions or cultures. I could use my words for it, but 'my words' led readers in different direction because of the meaning of their words depended on their feelings.

    As I first wrote, I can feel differences between two sentences in the above, but it depends on my feeling. But if I keep writing and try reading articles, I would be able to become closer to their original intentions.

    I have been thinking how I can improve my English.   Should I read a lot of English books in order to increase my vocabulary?   Should I listen to English radio or TV in order to improve my listening comprehension?   Of course they are important, but I know I have a weak point.   A more important thing for me is proper grammar at the moment.

    I know when someone wants to speak a language which is not their mother tongues, they need some skills of communication.   I think it is not necessary being fluent but passionate.   On the other hand, with writing, you can not show your emotions or reactions, or see theirs.

    Whenever I write English mail, even if it is a short mobile mail, I become a little nervous and I think I have low confidence, because I always think my writing is not good enough to express my emotions or thoughts, so it might hurt someone or be misunderstood, etc.

    I should've studied English grammar more in my school days, therefore I can not have confidence.   Using the past perfect tense was one of the main lessons in my high school days, I was not serious enough, so I'm always confused when I want to write such sentences which include this grammar.

    I think writing helps me to improve my English by considering how to make sentences in English, so it's good practice for me to write something.

    Sometimes I don't know which preposition is right.
    I was writing a comment to a certain film, and I wanted to write my feeling sympathy.
    I realized I didn't know which preposition was suited to that situation.
    I wrote I felt sympathy for him, but one second later, I thought it might be right to write "to" instead of "for", and then, I'm completely confused it would be better to use "with".
    I should ask someone whom speak English as their mother tongue.

    American ranks of police officers are different from British ones.
    Detective Chief Inspector is Japanese "Keibu", I think, but I heard the word "Lieutenant" on an American police drama which is called Columbo.
    I checked it on the web dictionary (http://www.reference.com/) and it says "Lieutenant is a military, naval, paramilitary, fire service or police officer rank."
    I haven't heard the word before in British police drama as far as I know, so it might be specialized for American police force.

    As one of the way of brushing up my English, I sometimes try to watch films in English without Japanese subtitles. The first film which I saw without Japanese subtitles and could understand was Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring with Gene Wilder. I haven't watched new one yet, some friends of mine told me that they preferred old one.

    Anyway when I watched the film the first time, I guess I could understand 80% of it. I could tell German English, American English, of course I could understand main stream, but precise things were a sort of mystery. Recently on Cable TV, they aired Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and I watched it in English again, yes, of course no subtitles. Since I watched this film, it has passed nearly three years, so I hadn't remembered all of them, but while I was watching this film, I realized I improved my listening comprehension a little, because I learned this time several things which I didn't know last time. And I learned what happened at the end of this film. Last time, I couldn't catch what happened to him. It was he, Charlie, got all of the factory.

    That made me happy.
    It's very difficult to know what is happening on myself.

    I like talking and listening English, but I don't like reading and writing English.

    Writing is much better than reading.    Yeah, reading is my weak point.    I tried many times to read some English newspapers or books, etc., but I couldn't continue it.

    I analyzed myself and found that I was a very fast reader in Japanese, therefore I felt frustration a lot with reading English.    That's why I can't stand it.

    It's just an excuse, anyway.