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The Ways to Communicate

TAZOE, Taiki (Sasebo National College of Technology)

Have you ever felt like no one understands you when you talk in English? I feel so sometimes. When I said to Siri which is built into iPhone, "What is the weather like today?" Siri said, "Sorry I don't know what you mean by bezer. "I'll swear I never talk to you anymore, Siri." We have often difficulty communicating in English. My question is "Why do we have such a huge difficulty communicating in English?"

The point that came to my mind first was how Japanese students learn it at school. We study English for three years at middle school, three more years at high school and more at university if you choose to. Basically, we learn English for more than 6 years. With that in mind, what we have to realize is the important point that it is not how long we learn English but how much we talk in English in class. Mainly, we focus on grammar and memorization instead of discussion or communication in English. Therefore, we place a distance from opportunities to communicate in English. This problem is especially true when it comes to listening. Here is my story that made me think about how important listening is. I usually try to make an effort to talk in English. One day I took part in an activity in which American people taught English. When I asked a question to a teacher, he got really angry and he said, "I said that a minute ago. You just didn't listen to me, did you?" Although I didn't mean to be rude to him, the lack of my listening ability caused this trouble. What is the best way to improve your English?

What popped into my head when I thought about it was this word. "Give it a shot" It means that we should challenge to do something. As I said, we spend almost all our time on grammar and memorization in class. It may be true that repetitive activities are necessary for us, but we need to know that English is first and foremost a means of communication. Even if we know the grammar of a language, it doesn't help us unless we actually use it. You have to have confidence to find or make opportunities to talk in English. "Give it a shot." I'm sure that is the fastest way to improve your communication skill and your English.

However, making an effort to talk doesn't necessarily mean having good communication skills. To talk smoothly, we need to get to know ourselves better because the best way to communicate with people is to be a person who has a lot of things to talk about. For example, have you explained what your school is like? It's quite hard to explain it to foreigners because they have no idea about Kosen system, and even many Japanese don't know what Kosen is. If I have to explain about Kosen, I would say, "Kosen is a special high school, which is combined with a two year junior college. So, students typically go to this school for five years from 15 to 20 years old." Also, there may be some situations in which we need to talk about ourselves, like what we love, what our dream is, what our family is like and so on. In these situations, however, we can't express ourselves precisely because we don't know exactly who we are as much as we should. That's why we feel it is difficult to talk about ourselves. Therefore, we need to get to know ourselves to have smooth communication.

Here is another problem. There are many Japanese who don't know how to say "No." When we want to turn down a request, we would beat around the bush without saying no. I don't mean we should say NO bluntly. We have to know there is another way to say NO. While I stayed in Canada, I had taken a business class for a few months. One day my friend and I tried to sell a car as role-play in class. He is Brazilian and he was my competition on the role-play. I told my customers how clean my company's car is for the environment and how comfortable it is for drivers. They got interested in my company's car more than others. Then, they asked my competitor and me if they could have a discount when they bought the car and a GPS navigation system. I didn't want to sell it with any discount so I said "I'll think about it" which means "No, I can't" in Japan. On the other hand, the competitor said "I'm afraid I can't give you a discount but when your car has any trouble, you can call our customer service for free for a year as a perk if you bought my company's car. Eventually, the customer chose the competitor's car. When I had this experience, I got such a huge culture shock. Even if the answer is "no," they can put it another way. That's an absolutely important communication skill. If you can turn down without saying no bluntly but obviously, I'm sure you can talk more smoothly and deeply.

We feel difficulty communicating even in Japanese. However we will have opportunities to talk with people in not only Japanese and English but also Spanish, Portuguese or any other foreign languages because of globalization. I'm sure you will have a good communication if you remember what I said in this speech. Even if we don't know other languages, we can understand each other as long as we know the ways to communicate.