Has any Korean or Japanese tried studying English in Malaysia? Our style is British English and we’re the number 1 in South East Asia in terms of the number of yearly IELTS takers and passers (check with the British Council to confirm). 🙂
We are a peaceful, multi-racial society with a rapidly advancing political-economic-educational system.

Thanks for everything! Great inspiration…

(Excuse my English, I’m still learing it)

Your methods of learning Japanese really inspired me greatly. I’m learning English in similar ways to your methods. I’ve even created a blog to introduce your and Antimoon’s way of learning foreign languages to Korean people.

But this book, ‘Naver Study English’, is not a good choice.
I’m Korean and I saw how this book got it’s famous. The book really thrilled many readers. But they began to find that the method promoted by this book was not even based on real experiences.

The author, Chan-yong Jung’s English is not as good as your Japanese. And many readers who followed the book’s instructions became frustred because it didn’t work. Even after trying it for 2 or more years!

Has it occured to you that korea’s lowest toeic rank is odd? The book came out in late ’90s (in Korea), and so many people follow the book, but we Koreans havent’t improved much.

I cannot say the book is entirely wrong. Sometimes it gives great tips (and you quoted that parts), but we need more than that.

I think your and Antimoon’s methods are way more better than the book.

How to find this kind the material to cover the step one?

in www.ba.tyg.jp/~welchr/Chung.html

A course with children level learning without any english voices with tranlation is very hard to find…

Can you help me?

I have never practiced listening to French. I can hardly speak a sentence in French, yet I can read it fine, and I communicate with people online in French fine. I know a guy from Taiwan who writes very well in English. He has played online games in English, which requires you to write fast, so he has had a lot of expeirence with writing English with people who are fluent in English. However, he has a hard time speaking. Why is this? I’m not sure really, but I think he never really focused on listening input when he was in Taiwan, he had just focused on reading/writing. People who are learning a language need to practice listening, they shouldn’t wait until they can read first. I can repeat Japanese easily, whether I know the meaning or not, because I know how Japanese works. However, even though I can communicate in French well when writing, when I hear French it goes by me so quickly. I can’t repeat what is being said, because I’m not hearing everything. I don’t know how the language works, even though I’ve taken four years of French. I only started learning Japanese last September, but because I listen to Japanese constantly, I’m recognizing how the language works. Practice listening now! Don’t wait! There’s no reason to wait. Focus on both reading, and listening. That’s my opinion on it all.

Oh, and about listening without understanding the meaning of what is being said, this is a very good technique. I am surrounded with Japanese all the time, but I don’t constantly have a dictionary by me. I’d have such a headache! It’s a lot of work to look up words I don’t know, and I’m fine with doing it, because I love the language, but sometimes I’m just too tired. Life is tough, and it tires you out. It’s okay to take a step away from the dictionary, and just listen. I watch Japanese dramas all the time without a dictionary both without subtitles and with, I listen to Japanese music without looking up everything, I’ll watch to variety shows, and listen to talk shows without understanding exactly what is going on. Working on listening is important. Sometimes when you put down the dictionary for a second, and just sit back and listen, you’ll realize how much you’ve improved. You’ll realize how you can hear every individual word, that the language isn’t a blur anymore. You’ll realize that you can understand some of what is being said, even if you don’t understand everything as a whole, it’s an accomplishment. If we spend all our time sweating by the dictionary, you’ll miss out on the recognization of your accomplishments, you’ll tire yourself out, and on days where you don’t want to do anything, you’ll go back to English and forget what you had learned.

(btw: sorry for complaining about navigating the drama scripts. I was being lazy, and didn’t want to read every single thing in Japanese to find out how they work. Now I realize how lazy I was, lol)

Anyway, what I was going to say before my fat fingers intervened was – (to the person requesting Gokusen scripts): is this useful:

dramanote.seesaa.net/category/167203-1.html

And thanks for recommending Gokusen, Khatz – I am seriously getting into it (an a$$-kicking school teacher- fantastic!).

Mark

Also, I have another question (sorry for all the questions). I’ve started watching Dragon Zakura again, this time with no subtitles, using a script, and a dictionary. The problem is that I don’t know how to navigate the scripts on どらま･のーと. They seem to skip over some dialouge, because in the Dragon Zakura script I’ll be reading dialouge, then suddenly the script will describe action in the movie, and then will go back to some dialouge. It’s confusing this way, because I don’t know when to listen to the dialouge because I don’t know if the script is skipping over dialouge, or if I just lost my place in the script. How am I suppose to use these scripts?

Oh, and, did you ever use a script for Gokusen 1? I’ve been looking all over for one. I love Yankumi’s voice, I’m trying to mimic the way she speaks (when she’s not speaking like a yazuka, lol).

Maybe you can have a combination of system-working and Japanese/French “synergy”. For example, you can listen to Japanese music while working on French. Read articles in French about Japanese or articles in Japanese about French.

And, definitely, read stuff you’ve already read in French in Japanese and cetera…