eigobu

Hi to anyone who has been reading. I haven't been writing in this blog very much but I hope to challenge myself in the coming months to write almost every day.

Yesterday, I attended a group for people who are learning English. It's called "eigobu" and it's a good way to connect with people who have an interest in learning foreign languages much like I am. Since the Japanese members are learning English and the English speakers in the group are learning Japanese we can help each other out by correcting our mistakes and offering advice. Usually a group like this where there is a dual focus (Japanese and English learning) it doesn't turn out well because members have different motives, but since we are limiting the members to people who can speak a minimum level of English/Japanese, it has worked out better than I expected.

This time was our second time meeting. The first meetup was kind of a planning meeting so we didn't do very much but this time everyone introduced themselves in English and we recorded what they said on video. We then watched the video and talked about what the speaker could do to improve their English.

Everyone has their own way of speaking so it was very interesting to talk about how they could improve their language abilities. We found that there is often an easier, or grammatically simpler way of saying what the speaker wants to say. Perhaps the simpler expression doesn't come to mind or the speaker wants to use more complicated grammar, but it was a reoccurring problem with our Japanese and English speakers, myself included.

I speak a relatively high level of Japanese every day so I am not usually corrected often, but yesterday I got a change to get some advice on improving some areas of my Japanese. It was a fairly rare experience for me so I was really glad that I could take part in it. I'm looking forward to next time.