July 16, 2018　=========

☆  participate  参加する

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Happy marine day! 

A long, long time ago, I worked at Nova, and we had a thing called the Voice Room. If you have even been a Nova student, you’ll know what that is. It’s their “free talk” room, and you can go in whenever you want and talk about whatever you want. It was actually a really good idea, I think, especially for motivated students.

However, one thing I remember about the Voice Room was when students would come in but not participate. They would sit silently for the 40-minute “lesson” … even if there was no one else in the room! In other words, the teacher basically chatted for 40 minutes while they listened. To be honest, this isn’t a great way to use this kind of resource. If you are in a class, or a situation where you can talk freely in English, it’s so important to participate actively, rather than just being a passive listener. Listening might seem like a good idea, but you can practice listening with movies, or TV, and so on. It’s so much harder to practice speaking and having an actual conversation in English.

So, if you’re in a situation where you have a chance to speak English, be sure to participate actively! You’ll gain so much more and it’ll be much more interesting for everyone – not just you.

Bye,

Chris