The International News Anchor Who Couldn't Speak English: My English Struggle Diary Part 1

I am a freelance announcer☆
I used to work on a news program specializing in international news☆

If someone told you that,

You'd think, 'Oh, this person must be fluent in English.'

Wouldn't you?

But I!
Could not speak English!!

Since my job was to convey information to everyone in Japanese, whether or not I could speak English didn't affect my work.

Even if a foreigner spoke to me on the street, I could barely manage to reply with a few words like 'uh,' 'ah,' 'um.'
My grammar was already shaky, starting from the present perfect tense.
If someone said 'How are you?', I could at least answer 'I'm fine, thank you' quite cheerfully.

However, I thought it would be bad to be this bad at English while doing this job, so
now,

I can respond without panicking if a foreigner suddenly speaks to me, and I can convey what I want to say reasonably well.
I have almost no trouble traveling abroad.
TOEIC score: 840 (July 2024)

(Please don't say 'Is that all?')

I'm not at the level where I can say I'm working at full capacity in English, but
well, generally speaking, I've become someone who can speak English.

My method for improving my English... is

I will dare to say it.

It is paying for it.

Looking back,

the peak of my English ability up until then was in my third year of junior high school.
At the time, I took the Eiken Pre-2nd Grade test because it was advantageous for entrance exams, and I passed by the skin of my teeth.

Although I studied reasonably well for high school entrance exams and got into a preparatory school,
since I got into university through a designated school recommendation,
I didn't even know about university entrance exam English,

My university major was nutrition.

I didn't really study language properly...

By the way, there were English classes at university too, but

in the very first class, there was a picture of a pencil drawn on the textbook that was handed out,
and there were blank spaces,

No way...!?

Yes, my level was basically just enough to be made to answer "pencil."

Of course, a junior high school Eiken Pre-2nd grade level is bound to be lost after a dozen years or so.

Foreigners would come to the car showroom where I worked as a new graduate,
so the momentum to want to be able to speak English quite well grew there, but

I didn't do full-scale customer service, and when it was absolutely necessary, I could have someone who spoke English take over, so there wasn't much urgency.

More than that, I was attending an announcing school while working, submitting entry sheets, and job hunting, so that took priority.

And so, through one thing or another, in 2020,
I ended up becoming an anchor for a program that handles international news,

It's bad to be dealing with foreign affairs to this extent and not be able to speak English,
and even setting work aside, it's way too bad to only be able to say "I'm fine, thank you."

The days of not being able to leave the house continued during the COVID-19 pandemic,
and I also had the desire that when this was over, I wanted to have one thing that I could say I had become able to do.

So,
in April 2020, I joined an English school? Or service?

This is where it happened!
My first major investment!!

For one year, I studied for over 1,000 hours in total, doing three hours of shadowing and instant English composition every day, plus three online English conversation lessons per week.

I ended up dipping quite a bit into the savings I had built up from working for nearly ten years.

Some people say you can learn English for free on YouTube and that it's a waste of money to pay for it, but
I decided that if I were to spend several years doing nothing while thinking there were free ways to do it, it would be better to pay a significant amount for one year and really commit.

(Past article: About my weaknesses)As I wrote in,
I am the type of person who will honestly do what I am told to do,
but I will never do things that won't lead to an immediate crisis if I don't do them.

People with strong willpower can gain benefits by working steadily and cheaply.

Since I lack that, I cannot gain benefits unless I invest money.

I reported my daily study content to a dedicated supervisor, had meetings once every two weeks, and had my progress checked.

At first, I couldn't speak at all in online English lessons and could only respond haltingly with single words, but
I became able to have conversations about things like anime recommended by my geeky teacher, telling them I watched something they suggested, or talking about things that happened to me recently.


I also took the Versant speaking test, where you speak into a computer to answer, once a month.

I eventually reached a score of 50, which is said to be the level required for overseas assignments,
but even though I got the score, I was by no means able to speak fluently.

In the end, I think I put in about 1,100 hours of study time.

Of course it was tough, but
it became a habit to think "I have to do English!" whenever I had free time, and
since it was interesting to go from not understanding anything to gradually understanding more, it didn't feel like a penance.

However, because my starting point was so low, after a year, my English level was finally just enough to not feel anxious while traveling abroad.

At work, I became able to vaguely understand the original language of the news, and it was quite useful to be able to grasp the nuances of what was being said.

A year has passed since the program started, and now I wonder if I should travel abroad a lot to deepen my knowledge,

That's what I thought, but...

To be continued