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Studying English in Cebu
Mio Igarashi, Japanese
Mio is a lover of English and a traveler. She can also speak Spanish. She's been to South America and part of Asia. Currently, she is living in Canada.
Before you read this article, I would like you to ask yourself,
How can we learn English in Cebu?
I think Cebu is a perfect place to learn English especially for those who study English for the first time abroad.
Here, I will tell you mostly about LANGUAGE STUDY, and also share about LEARNING itself, then a little bit about EDUCATION.
First of all, I want to ask you why you need English in the first place. I have seen many students coming to Cebu to improve their speaking skill, it means you need English for the communication, right? If you are able to communicate with people from all over the world, it’s going to be a huge benefit in your life.
However, According to a survey, 41.6% of Japanese people living in Japan said that they can’t speak English at all while 30.4% said that they can speak only a little with very simple words. It means 72% of them are not confident in their English skills even though they’ve studied for years already.
One of the reasons why they are not confident is because they try to speak English perfectly. If you want to speak perfectly like a native speaker, please live in an English-speaking country for a few decades, since it’s way too hard to improve that much for a month or even a year. However, if you don’t need it that much, please don’t set an extremely high goal, otherwise you will hate English eventually. “Enjoying” is the key, and it greatly affects your motivation in learning.
Secondly, I will talk about improvement. Imagine a triangle. In my theory, You will see two important factors in improving English, “Interest”and “Effort” Language study should have both.
The important thing here is the order. “Interest” comes first, then “Effort” follows. Finally you improve and you will get more interested.
Let’s think about the “Interest” part at first.
1. Enjoy the communication. As I told you earlier, remember that “Enjoying” is the key.
2. Be curious, but be careful not to be to expect much, because as I also told you, if you set the goals too high, you might get nothing and end up hating English.
3. Most importantly, love and respect the people or the culture in the place. If you love somebody or would like to make friends in another country, you probably want to get to know them more. To get to know them more deeply, you need communication. For example, I got to love and respect the people and the culture in the Philippines. The teachers are great, and I wanted to get to know them more. It’s been really motivating for me to speak English with them while I was staying there.
Then comes ‘Effort”. Yes, learning needs an effort. It takes time. Especially when it comes to language learning, it takes forever. I am not kidding. Language is living, changing always, so we really have to catch up with that.
1. Continue learning is one of the most important and the hardest part. Sadly, we, human being, forget. We easily forget how to speak English if we haven’t spoken it for a few years, or even for a few months.
2. So get motivated by continue having interest of what you do.
3. Then have an actual practice. There is a saying “Practice makes perfect.”
For example, you start learning with communication. You listen, you ask and you speak.
Very practical.=“Output”.
And if you enjoy the communication, you will feel like speaking more. Then you need more vocabularies and more expressions.
You study more by yourself, get organized.=“Input”.
You improve your English. You want to try more. You try to have more communication.
This is the happy triangle.
However, if we look at the language education in Japan, it’s like this.
“Effort” comes first. For example, exams and grammar study. It doesn’t help us get interested. Many Japanese people find it boring, so as a result, they get to hate English.
Many of the students coming to Cebu have this kind of complex about English, I guess.
But the good thing is you came there to try different ways of learning from the ones you’ve tried in Japan.
I have been so happy to see the students enjoying learning and trying their best to improve in Cebu.
When it comes to language education, everybody has a different way of learning process. We are always looking for a way that would be more effective for each of us. But with all my experiences, I would give you these words of wisdom,
“There is no royal road to learning.” “No shortcut to learning”.
I am so happy that I have actually seen so many students enjoying their English communication in Cebu.
Language schools in Cebu usually provide “one on one lesson”, which helps you learn at your own pace. That’s one of the reasons why I can recommend you to choose Cebu to learn English especially if it’s your first time studying abroad.
However, if you want to know how much you have actually improved, or try to use your English to people worldwide, I also recommend you definitely go to some native English speaking countries and see how it works. You might feel more motivated, or disappointed, you never know, but I would say it’s worth trying. It’s important to know if your English is understandable to others. That’s the main purpose of the communication, right?
In conclusion, all I want to say, as a language otaku, I would be so glad if more and more people enjoy the communication in English as a Second Language (ESL). This actually helps the process of improvement.
Going back to my question before reading it.
The answer is enjoying the communication!
If you enjoy speaking English and get to like it, you will win.