今回は英コミのデイビッド・コージー先生に書いていただきました。
“But I don’t have time!”
Teachers often tell students that they should study English every day. Students know that doing so would help them improve their English, but students, like everybody else, are busy. They don’t have time to study English every day—or so they might think.
In fact, you do have time to study English every day. Maybe you can’t study for ninety minutes a day, or for sixty minutes a day, or for thirty minutes a day, but can you find fifteen minutes a day? You can, and you should!
Studying regularly is more effective than studying every now and then for a long time. Reading, writing, speaking, or listening to English for just fifteen minutes a day, every day, is better than studying once a week for ninety minutes.
But what happens if you miss a day? Don’t worry about it. Just start again the next day, and because studying English can be fun, it shouldn’t be too hard to do that.
If you enjoy talking with your friends, talk with a friend on Line, Zoom, or in whatever way is easiest for you. Just make a rule with your friend that you will speak only English for fifteen minutes. What can you talk about? The same things you talk about with your friends in Japanese.
If you enjoy watching movies, watch an English video. There are lots available on YouTube, Netflix, and so on. Watch for five minutes with no subtitles*. See how much you can catch. Then watch it again with subtitles to check yourself. Then watch it again without subtitles and see if you can understand more.
Of course you can also read an English book or keep an English journal. It doesn’t matter what you do. Just be sure to do it every day.