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I came to USA at the age of 16 from Japan.  In high school, I was involved in sports, theatre.  The group activity set the great stage for me to learn the language in the best context.  The language w/o context is just like learning language w/o pictures and native speaker.   The school also provided me w/ a good tutor and a great friend that I went to get help w/English.

Connecting with local native language speaker is essential part of learning language.  Having to target non-native speaker and pair up with native speaker in a good context proved to be effective for me.

Later, I learned Spanish by working in the volunteer program in Puerto Rico.  I also learned that by putting myself in the "must use language" situation, I had no choice but to speak and learn in ER quickly.  It was very fast pace, but did its job.

posted 2 years, 4 months ago
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