The first visitor from France
I was in charge in teaching Japanese to French people at ARCK from 2001 to May 2009. Miss An, one of 10 learners at that time, has informed me of her visit to Japan in September. We, of course, communicate in Japanese by E-mail. She is a company employee who was learning Japanese at ARCK from April 2001 until she became ill in 2005. But 2.5 years later she recovered her health and resumed lessons.
Miss An lives in a southern region100 km away from Paris. She used to come to Paris every Monday by using car, train and subway. All the way through for her lesson ! She was always eager. She was full of herself when it came to grammar and dictation with her face looking bright with her confidence. To my surprise, she set up her own rules to facilitate learning by heart system. As French way of putting things in logical order, she wanted to create rule with theory in Japanese learning. Miss An was being rather difficult person. She disliked conversation, so I had to be attentive to an introduction conversation of every lesson. The oral questions were often prone to be taken as personal. That bothered me ! For example, she hesitated to tell how she had spent the previous week and weekend. I always told her to imagine what she had done. But it wasn’t so easy for her to create stories and put them into Japanese. That was double effort. I desperately tried various ways to make conversation with her. And soon I discovered a good way. First I showed her sketches, paintings and posters and then I had her describe and explain about the scene. As it went on and on like that by mixing with dialogue, she became gradually good at speaking to me. This was the way how she advanced talking.
Miss An, little by little, agreed to “practice is more important than theory in language learning”. However I missed asking her reason why she was learning Japanese. But now, it is clear to me by the news of her visit to Japan. I now also recall that, in spite of her being not very young, she wore socks and put gloves which looked like cosplay (costume-play). I imagined she is the one of those persons, I ♥ Japan！ Arriving on 20th September, the time has come to test her competence of six years studying and my teaching !
That greatly excites me. I decided to speak only Japanese with her here in Japan.
