LETTER FROM HAPPY ENGLISH SCHOOL June 29th, 2022

Hello.　How are you doing？　How is your English study coming along?

Do you read a lot of English passages? Do you do a lot of translation work from Japanese to English? I have found that reading a lot of English and translating Japanese into English a lot helps improve your English a great deal.

It is a matter of course that you do not only review words and phrases you know, but also pick up new ones and further understand grammar by reading a wide-range of English passages. However, even if you understand what you read, it is another matter if you are really able to use it in your speech or in your writing. Therefore, in order to put what you have learned to use, translation exercises must be done with the model translations at hand for you to refer to. It is a good idea for you to work on translation exercises with sample answers that have set expressions with good explanations of why a certain Japanese sentence should be translated into English in the way you may never think of.

You should learn as many natural expressions as you can. It is not effective to only learn these expressions by heart because you are likely to forget them after a while. You should be provided with Japanese sentences which you have to translate into English, and after that you should correct your translations and try to memorize accurate corresponding English sentences as models. In this way you can learn many expressions with strong impacts and they are more likely to stay in your brain as long-term memories.

Japanese and English are very different languages in terms of their structures, words, expressions and ways of thinking. In a way, we need to accept English usage as it is. Even if we translate Japanese literally word by word into English, it does not sometimes sound natural or does not make sense. We need to understand, accept and use as much accurate and natural English as possible and we acquire such English through a lot of reading and translation work.

4月にスタートして3か月が経とうとしています。英語の学習はどのように進んでいますか。たくさん読んで、様々な語彙や表現そして文法に出くわし、学び、もちろん覚えたものを使う。そして今回は、これらに「日本文からの英訳の練習をたくさんする」ということを付け足します。英作の練習にはモデルの文がなければなりません。必ず模範解答のあるものを選び、それに近づけるように、訳します。違うと修正し、そして出来るだけ自然で正確な英語を理解して覚えて、身近な題材で例文などを作って自分のものにしておきます。結局、「この日本語はこう訳す」というパターン化したものを身に付けて、さらにいろいろなことが言えるよう書けるようにしていきます。

実際、日本語と英語は文の構造も語彙も表現も考え方もかなり違います。しかるに、英語力を伸ばすには、日本語と英語の違いを理解して、英語の自然な表現を、そのまま受け入れ覚える必要があります。

様々な文を読むことと、そして英訳の練習で必ず、英語力の蓄積ができます。

よりよく理解し、より印象付けて覚えるように、また1人ではできにくいことを一緒に取り組んだり、色々と工夫したりして、モティベーションを持ってもらうように、私たちは大いにお手伝いしますが、その蓄積は自分で地道に積むしかありません。伸び悩んでいてもこれを続けることによって、また実力がついていくものです。できるなら生活の中で毎日常に英語に触れて、毎日何かを学ぶことを日課にしてください。