What are some good methods and ways for a Japanese student to study and learn written and spoken English, with emphasis on composition, in order to prepare for English Language exams in four months, to be able to enter a top rated Japanese High School?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Judging from your post, you have the written part covered.
As for spoken English: practice! You need a native speaker with whom to practice your conversational English.
Avoid watching American television programs. The quality of the writing – even the news – has seriously deteriorated for the past twenty years or so.
Not quite; his post was a run-on sentence. Still pretty good though, and certainly MUCH better than my Japanese!
I am not familiar with going from an Asian language system like Japanese to one with the Latin alphabet like English. But when I was learning Spanish, it helped a bit to get movies in Spanish and turn on the English subtitles, or get movies in English and turn on the Spanish subtitles. The OP could try this for help on spoken English.
As for composition, that’s a toughie. There’s probably nothing that could help more than just constant practice.
Yeah, but still pretty damn good!
I may have my perceptions colored by 8 years of teaching English conversation in Korea. 
To expand on my previous post: in my experience with Asian students learning English (and keep in mind, please, that I never taught any Japanese students; so my opinion may be worth exactly what you paid for it in this particular case), written English, while not easy, at least has the advantage of allowing the student to take his/her time to phrase themselves carefully (how’s that for a run-on? :p). Spoken English is more often the roadblock.
If you can hear and understand the language, try getting a lot of American TV shows and watch them without subtitles. This is the best way to become confident of sentence structures.
And as Astroboy14 said, to get good at pronunciation you really need a native speaker to help you.
Berlitz is a good school for spoken language, if you can afford it.
アメリカ人ですけど、国際基督教大学の卒業生。大学の方ではほとんど日本語を習わなかった。単語リストを毎週新しいのを習って、その後それらの単語を二度見なく、全然授業では使わなかった。それではすぐに忘れてしまう。
電車で日本人の学生が英語の単語リストを勉強している姿はたくさん見ているので、英語の教え方は大学の日本語の教え方と同じ様です。しかし、試験がそういうリストが覚えられているか、本当に英語がぺらぺらかのどちらを試しているかはわかりません。ぺらぺらに会話ができるが、それでも試験に落ちるという可能性があるかもしれません。
個人的には「ものを習う」というのは自分が人生に使えるものを身や頭に付けるためのものだから、事実世界で使えるものなら、試験に落ちてもどうでもいい事と思いますけれども、日本の会社にとっては自力より学歴の方がまだ大切かもしれません。
大学の時、私が自分でテレビ番組を辞書手持ちで見て、漫画や諸説を苦労して読んで、人にちゃんとした会話を必ずしようとして、大学に入る前のBerlitzで一年間勉強できた日本語をほぼ自力で自分で進め、教えできた。が、大学の授業を落ちない最低の成績にも必ずなっていた。私が授業で一番日本語が理解できて、辞書なしで話せたという実態だったなのに、試験によっては駄目でした。
まあ、簡単にいえば、日本語を本当に習おうとするよりは単に学校で貰った単語リストや教科書に書いてある事をそのまま暗記した方が試験をパスする可能性が高くないかな～という事を先生に聞いてきたほうがいいと思います。先生の方が一番現在の試験世界に詳しいでしょう。
This question is probably better suited for IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
K,we’re trying to help. If you wanna post shredded wheat, please do so in another forum!
Huh. Well, I advised him to do the exact opposite. Poor kid. What’s he supposed to think? :smack:
English may be going downhill, but all the English speakers are going right along with it. 
You might ask questions here about English. Or, if you like, we could start with your first post and make suggestions. Of course, your Guest Membership lasts for one month only.
Do you like either of these ideas?
Have a listen to some of the shows on BBC Radio 4, particularly the news and current affairs.
You will hear well-spoken, intelligent English in a “classic” english accent.
Write a diary, read a book and write your opinions of it. Study the style of the exams you are going to take and follow that pattern. It will depend on the school as to what style of composition they want you to write, and as you only have four months, there is no point in working on a style that they will not like.
Set a timer for ten or fifteen minutes, choose a subject and WRITE. I find that my Japanese students will write, erase, write, erase and at the end of the time they have almost nothing on paper. It need not be perfect, it needs to have volume and content. Throw away your pencils, have confidence in yourself and use a pen! When the timer goes off, read back what you wrote. Note the mistakes that you can see for yourself. Then think about what you could have written to make the content better. Finally write it out again, including your own corrections and better ideas. Then pick another topic and begin again. If you do this every day for four months you’ll increase speed and volume a huge amount.
Good luck!
Are there any foreign exchange students in your school and would they be willing to help you - you could do a language swap.
Listening and “shadowing” what the person is saying is a very useful way of developing fluency though it is very very difficult to do at first and is very frustrating! I second the recommendation to listen to BBC Radio 4. You can listen on the net. There is also Radio 7 which is repeats of dramas and stories. If you want news then Radio 4 is better.
If you want to emphasize composition (and I assume that means academic written English, which I’ve taught to foreign students at UCLA, many from Japan), I suggest reading a lot of that kind of writing. Try to find academic writings in a field you know or are interested in. Then, pay attention to writing techniques and how academic English is written to create cohesion (making one sentence connect to the previous sentences).
I’ve read many papers by students from Japan (and other countries, of course) in which every individual sentence was grammatically correct, but the overall discourse was incomprehensible. Sentence structure, as used in academic English, to create cohesion, is very different from Japanese (and other languages). Connectors (such as pronoun reference), and transitional phrases, are very important. And generally, new information comes at the end of a sentence.
It’s a lot to learn in four months, but the more you read this kind of writing, the better you’ll understand it. To learn academic written English, the suggestion that you “just practice” is not enough. This kind of writing is a very social process, and it’s highly convention-driven. You need to get feedback from someone who is familiar with ESL/EFL writing instruction–not someone who will just correct your grammar and punctuation.
You might look for a reference book by Ann Raimes (especially Focus on Composition and Keys for Writers)–these books were written for someone like you (an ESL writer). Or, get a TOEFL preparation book (with CDs).
TV shows will help you learn colloquial conversation, but I’m not sure that’s what your school is looking for. They will, however, help your fluency, and if you have any kind of oral interview, that will help. Also, you can go online and look for “audio essays” at places like npr.org that have the “printed” transcripts. The most important thing is that whatever you listen to, watch or read is meaningful to you. Language is acquired only when there is meaning.
BTW, the OP did NOT have a run-on sentence. (Don’t confuse the poor guy, Lizard!)
My advice: spend a good deal of time in an English-speaking country. Nothing will teach you faster than total immersion.
Sage Rat, I understand the circumstances, and I’m fine with it - except that the google ads are in Japanese now! - but if you could post an in-line English translation when you do this, I think we’d all appreciate it. Thanks.
For speaking, yes. For academic writing, not necessarily. I had many undergrads at UCLA who had been in the country since their early teens. When they spoke, they sounded pretty much like native speakers. When they wrote, they produced strange constructions and collocations that few native speakers would.
My Japanese is a little rusty*, but I believe the above says:
Good luck - the people here want to help you.
Also a real bonus: English uses far fewer words.
*coincidentally this is also the punchline to a possible entry in the ‘tell me a dirty joke’ thread…
I’m not sure if this is the kind of help that you’re looking for, but when I was overseas anyone trying to improve their English usually carried a crossword puzzle book.