Intensive English for College Students at Yale University

Junya Tominaga

Class

Class


During this summer, I participated in “Intensive English for College Students” at Yale Summer Session. This course is designed to help non-native students to improve their academic English skills a lot. In this course, I took two required subjects: “Reading and Writing” and “Listening and Speaking,” and two elective subjects: “Pronunciation” and “American Popular Music.” In addition, I joined in some activities offered by Yale Staff and enjoyed hanging out with my classmates from other countries and traveling to several cities around Connecticut.
Dormitory

Dormitory


These classes gave me a lot of chances to improve my English skills. In “Reading and Writing” class, the teacher always encouraged every student to discuss interesting topics in the text, so I could get the opportunities to express my opinion in English in front of international classmates. Because I repeated to argue what I think in this class everyday, I overcame my fear whether I could use correct English or not. I got to give responding quickly priority over being correct about detailed grammar in real-time communication. Moreover, the teacher checked our writing quite carefully. Her advice let me notice my writing’s peculiarities to improve consciously. By the way, I learned the practical usage of English in “Speaking and Listening” class. I delivered a variety of presentations and organized several discussions in this class. In the final assignment, I gave 20 native speakers living around Yale campus interviews about Japanese impressions. I think this experience was so precious because I could know what American native speakers think about our nation and people with communicating to them frankly. In “Pronunciation” class, I learned how to make natural English sounds. I got to know most of Japanese speak English with the peculiar accents unconsciously, so I made my sounds more natural than before. However, I understood how difficult we made natural sound like native speakers at the same time.
Our teacher and class

Our teacher and class


Furthermore, I learned the difference between Japanese culture and others in this program. For one and a half months, I sometimes hung out with my classmates coming from other countries and communicated a lot about life styles, values, political opinions, race problems, the impressions of other countries and so on. I became to notice that Japan is one of small unique countries and that there are too many unknown facts and ways to think in the world. I also traveled to some cities around Connecticut. As I had never been to America, every travel gave me various kinds of impacts and I made interesting unforgettable memories.
I think I improved English skills to some extent, but this isn’t enough to express what I think exactly. I can take easy conversations, but I have difficulty in discussing serious issues deeply. What is most beneficial for me in this program is to learn how to study practical English effectively. Till I experienced this program, I didn’t know what skills we need to learn in order to communicate smoothly with foreigners including both native speakers and non-native speakers. Thus, I had aimed not at English as a communication method but at English as test results unintentionally before this program started. We should learn useful English for our daily lives. In addition, I made strong motivation to be able to communicate in English like Japanese. For now, I continue to study English steadily everyday.
As for the international exchange, I learned a lot of things from American culture and others. I took not only superficial information but also profound information introduced with direct communication. Then, I became to treat people coming from every country as the same men equally although I had definitely divided people between Japanese and non-Japanese before. I also could eliminate a sort of prejudice and stereotype from my mind. I recognized Japanese good points and bad points during my stay in America, so I have pride in our strengths and try to assimilate other countries’ advantages positively.
As a result, this summer program is quite beneficial for me in many respects. I hope I will play an important role internationally based on these experiences. Even if most of international challenges will be so hard, I want to keep my lively feeling right now. In addition, the experiences made me get interests in studying abroad in future. If I get the chance to apply to overseas universities, I should make as much effort to achieve my target of studying abroad as possible.
Finally, I really appreciate “Friends of UTokyo, Inc.” This scholarship gave me the beneficial experiences of studying English in Yale University. I will be trying to the experiences into something positive.