LETTER FROM HAPPY ENGLISH SCHOOL　　June. 20th, 2023

Hello, how are you doing？ I hope everyone is well. Now the Step written test is over and junior high and high school final term exams are taking place. I hope everybody is doing well.

I have found that taking notes and writing down vocabulary and sentences are essential to memorizing and understanding English. The act of writing helps people learn and acquire knowledge effectively, so students who write down things to remember are likely to improve their English better than those who do not write much. The more you write, the more you are able to remember and hand-brain coordination works for you.

I also suggest that you read aloud as many sentences as you can and repeat what you hear as much as possible. The act of speaking also helps you retain the English words and phrases you have gone through. You use your mouth and ears and they stimulate your brain－I shall call it mouth-ear-brain coordination.

All these actions connect synapses in the brain and transmit memories through them to the hippocampus where long-term memory is stored. Improving memory takes a lot of writing and speaking. Just looking at English words and phrases don’t appear to lead to long-term memory, and you may easily forget them.

I hope you improve your English at your own pace and aim to take your English skills to the next level. Anyway, enjoy learning English and however small you may find your progress, you can improve your English even little by little as long as you continue to study. However, I would like you to bear in mind that the grade-pre 1 level is the level where you can read and listen to news articles with some ease. If you could try to aim for the grade pre-1, it would be definitely worth trying it. In fact, you need to memorize a lot to pass that test, though.

Keep it up.　

P.S. Last, but the most important thing is － to make a habit of translating everything you say and think about in Japanese into English yourself by consulting a dictionary, the internet, or even chat-GPT. We can help you, too. Have a nice day in English.

元気に過ごしていましたか。英検が終わり、中高生は期末テストの時期です。みんなよくできますように。

ノートを取ったり、語彙や語句を書き留めたりする生徒は、書かない生徒より効果的に英語を覚えるようです。また、聞いたことを繰り返し言ったり、声を出して読んだりすることで、脳内のシナプスがつながり記憶を長期記憶に保存する海馬に収めてくれます。書くことや声に出して言うことは、とても大切です。

できれば英検準1級のレベルまで英語を勉強すると、英文の記事がたやすく読めて、聞けることは間違いないですが、それぞれが自分のペースで学習を続けてもらうと、必ず英語が少しずつでも上達するものです。次のレベルにステップアップするように、また覚えた英語を維持するように頑張ってください。

最も大切なことは、自分の言うことを英語に変えて極力英語で話し過ごすことです。

ひとりで練習し言ってみてください。