Have you ever taken TOEFL before? I took a TOEFL iBT  last Sunday. TOEFL test is for students who want to study abroad, so it differs from TOEIC. It was my first time to take TOEFL. I will get the result in three weeks, and I am quite sure that I cannot enough score on TOEFL. TOEFL has four sections; reading, listening, writing and speaking. After the test, I thought that I should study harder for TOEFL test. Do you have any ideas for studying TOEFL? If you have taken TOEFL, or have studied for TOEFL, how do you study for it? Let me know how I can study for it in an efficient way?

     Also, I want to join a club or an activity in which I can help international students or I can do something with them. However, I guess that there is no club or circle at school so far. Does anyone do such an activity? Let me know about information related with what I want to do, please.

     If you don’t mind sharing with me and the other students about how you study English on your way, please tell me about it. 

Hello! My name is Yoko. My hobby is watching movies. I often go to the cinema with my friends and I also like to watch DVD. I don’t care to repeat watching same movies if I like them. So I can memorize the movies. Although I watch same movie many times, I never be tired of that. I have been watched only Western movie before, but I really like Japanese movie now. My favorite movies are thirteen, about a boy and so on in Western movie. Thirteen is the story that a thirteen year old girl changes herself to a juvenile delinquent. Both are the story of love with family, which make me impression. In Japanese movie, I like the summer time machine blues, which is comedy and blossom. I’ve ever thought Japanese movie are not interesting. I mean, Western movies are better, because they cost much more time and money. In addition they have big scale. But I think now Japanese movies are better about the content. Their story is not simple and profound even though they don’t have big scale. I think it difficult to find good movies, but I am happy when I found. I sometimes choose a movie by an actor or actress. Like this I really like watching movies. I recommend you to watch those movies if you do not watch yet. Please tell me your favorite movies.

Do you know gospel songs? I belong to the gospel club. I am always supported by gospel songs. When I entered OJC, I did not think to belong to gospel club. However, my big sister invited me there and I became to love them soon. They are very powerful and we can feel love, pleasure, hope and so on from them. I listened to gospel songs in church and also I took part in concerts. I interested in them very much and also I belong to different gospel group. I always enjoy my life by meeting them, so I hope that you love gospel songs. Now, there are 8 members in gospel club. Some people may feel few members. However, now we try to send message by singing the songs, so I believe that we can do that not to relate to number of members. I want you to love gospel songs as I said, and want you to visit my club not to think your age, that you do not have your friends in my club, that you are not good at singing and so on. In fact, my senior said that I was poor at singing though I liked singing songs, but she is good at doing that now. I think that we can change by our heart. My club is with homey atmosphere and I can enjoy for you. Shall we sing gospel songs in school festival because it is good to sing also one or two songs? If you are interested in gospel songs, please contact me a♪Also, I can introduce you to the different gospel group☆

My name is Yuka. I’m twenty years old. I live in Hyogo prefecture, so it takes two hours to go to OJC. This summer, I went to Taiwan to teach English to children. This is one of the fieldwork programs at OJC. So from now, I want to write about my life in Taiwan.

We have two programs in Taiwan, YMCA kindergarten program and YMCA elementary school program. In the morning, we go to the kindergarten, and learn how to establish an effective English class. Children are very cute. They talk to us in Chinese, but I can’t speak Chinese. So it was difficult to communicate with them, but I tried to communicate with them by using gestures and smile. After the kindergarten, we go to the private school. There are many elementary school students who can speak English very well. I enjoyed talking with them. After a week, we have demo-teaching. I had already learned how to teach English for children at OJC. So it was a good chance to do my original lesson. However, I have no experience to teach English for advanced learners like elementary school students in Taiwan. So, it was difficult for me to teach them. Through this program, I learned how difficult establish an effective English class. I have many things to study or improve to be a teacher. However, it was a good chance to think about my future. If you are interested in OJC’s school programs, please tell me what kinds of programs are you interested in.

Do you like Starbucks? Almost of all people know it. I work there for a part-time job, so today, I will tell you some my recommended beverages and food. First I recommend you that you try a  “caramel steamer”. Some of you know this, but this is not an espresso drink, so you can drink if you can’t drink coffee. The second drink to try is “caramel macchiato”. This is one of the most popular beverages in Starbucks, and made from espresso, milk, caramel syrup and caramel sauce. This time, I recommend you to change milk into soy milk. If you change the milk, your drink will taste milder than with ordinary milk. Like this, you can customize every beverage. The other example is Frappuccino. If you order “Vanilla Cream Frappuccino”, you can say like this; “please add chocolate chips, extra whip, add chocolate sauce and extra sauce. And!! Please lower  the amount of vanilla syrup“. Then Barista orders like this; “Short extra whip, with mocha sauce, extra sauce, with chip Vanilla Cream Frappuccino”. And you can drink your own original drink finally. Finally, I recommend you try some food “ Firone” ( I don’t know how to spell this). There are three sorts of it; beef, ham& cheese and vegetable. I especially like the beef one the best. I have introduced only 3 products, but there are lots of delicious things, so you can try it all!! Anyway, if you can, you may go to Starbucks and tell me what you like the best. If you do not know Starbucks or you’ve never been there, I can tell you about Starbucks.

I want to talk about some choices I have. My first choice is going for semester abroad as part of an OJC program. If I will use the semester abroad, I want to go to Ewha Woman’s University in Korea They have a good education program and there are many foreign students from many countries. I want to have cultural exchange with the students there and be friends. Also, I want to study more English in Korea However, I want to go abroad to study French, too. That is my second choice. I have been taking a French class since I was a second year high school student and I am thinking that I want to speak three or more language. I think French is fun and there are not many people who can speak French in Japan, I guess. I like doing something different from others. Another reason I want to study French is that I think it is not possible to be but I want I will be a staff of United Nation. For being that, it is better to be able to speak French. Thus, my second choice is being absent from school and going abroad to study French. My third choice is going nowhere during the college year and getting a job somewhere for the time being and after I got enough money, I will go to a country where people speak French such as France, Canada or Switzerland. I don’t know which choice I should choose. But what I really want to study is French. So… maybe I should choose my second or third choices. Is anyone thinking about going to study abroad? Please tell me your comment about my choices if you don’t mind. 

Realizing that you are all quite busy, you are allowed to miss two weeks worth of replies throughout the semester.  If you have any questions about using the blog, please contact me.  Welcome to the class, I look forward to working with you this semester.