Rino Hachimura

I am an exchange student and I have been taking Clarion since I came to RB. The reason why I chose this class is because I wanted to improve my writing skills, to write about my experience in America and the cultural differences between America and Japan, and to read my friends’ articles. I have read a lot of English articles in English class in Japan but they were written by someone I don’t know. Reading my friends’ articles is so much fun because I know who wrote them. Everytime I read their articles, I could learn a lot of English.

In Japan, we learn how to write articles but there is a big difference between articles written by American people and by Japanese people because English is not the first language for Japanese people. I guess Japan is known as having a good education system and I was happy about that as a Japanese person. However, I actually don’t think we have that great of an education system. I would say we have an environment that is good for studying for all students, based on equality.

I know there are many children around the world who are not receiving adequate education. However, the most important thing about Japanese schools is the values we learn. For example, you can find good facilities to learn anywhere where it is quiet and have free computers but what are Japanese people really learning?

Back home, my high school is an international school. We accept a lot of exchange students from all over the world. We have a rich environment to talk to foreign people in school, which is really educational for students. On the other hand, we only have three native English teachers. I think that is not good enough for us to learn conversational English. Japanese English teachers are also limited when teaching foreign languages. They have studied hard to teach English and also still study daily. However, I think that unless they have lived in an English speaking country or spent more time with native English speakers than Japanese people, they cannot teach actual English. I think we can learn basic grammar from Japanese English teachers because we can learn a lot from great textbooks but no one can pronounce the words like English people. Of course, so many people speak English with an accent but in our situation, even English teachers do not teach the right pronunciation. That is why the English level in Japan is not as good as other countries.

I read so many great articles here. I learned how to write an article from this class and that has helped me a lot in my American life and will help me in Japan because I will have a lot of opportunities to write articles for English class later.

I love my 2019 Clarion class, my friends, and my teacher a lot. I have learned so many things from this class. I made so many friends in this class. My editor Kassie is one of my best friends. We hung out a lot outside of school even though she didn’t take Clarion this semester. These memories are some of the best memories I have from my time abroad. I am so happy that I could be a member of Clarion. I want to say thank you to everyone I have met in my American life, especially from the 2019 Clarion class!