Have you asked yourself at least one of the following questions regarding TOEIC/TOEICer Haters?
Why do they hate TOEIC and TOEICers that much? Why are they so resentful? How could it be possible for them to be so certain of TOEIC and TOEICers? How come they sound so mean, so arrogant and so obnoxious? Is there anything they rant that is NOT worthless or meaningless? Is their English so good? So much better than mine or 'ours'?
I bet many of you have done probably more than one of the above. And then you might've gone either like "Well, Fuck it!" just as many of those on Twitter have done, or like "Wait a minute!" just as you had done and started coming here to leatn something from this Hater. Do you think other TOEICers need to learn something from Haters? Is there really something TOEICers can learn from Hayers?
Some say your enemy knows more about you than your allies or even yourself. If that's so true, you might wanna consider this at least: TOEIC/TOEICer Haters might know something not only about English in general but also about TOEIC and TOEICers—the stuff that they haven't been aware of. Whether or not they are very much willing to accept it, there are many things TOEICers can learn even from Haters, for learning itself is limitless. And, yes, learning is wonderful.
By the way, it is kind of funny that TOEICers aren't learning much directly from the test itself. Have you guys ever thought about that? They take TOEIC several times a year but they don't remember much about the tests. They are indeed learning TOEIC or TOEIC English mostly from various TOEIC workbooks. (Isn't this funny, or already a prevalent notion?) And my question here is, of course, if those English sentences in famous TOEIC workbooks are indeed so terrible that they taste like "Sand Sandwich" as Dr Mogi puts it.
I don't know for sure for I haven't had anything that barely resembles something as vile as "Sand Sandwich." Okay? In fact, I've been trying really hard to imagine what the taste would be like if I sprinkled a pinch of sand (instead of black pepper) on my favorite Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella Sandwich for the last . . . two minutes, but it doesn't seem it'll do any good. I don't think those so-called TOEIC sentences are that terrible, but as I've said this gazillion times they are all dead. And they are dead for good legitimate reasons, sort of.
Compare, for instance, those TOEIC sentences from popular TOEIC workbooks to those from the novels that Dr Mogi recommends, then I bet some of you might think the TOEIC sentences sound indeed better, which is kind of understandable and easily explainable. TOEIC sentences are neither poetic nor astute, the most of which have zero or little artistic/literary value, and they should be that way.
Imagine hightly creative & surreally astute Part7 passages that go beyond anyone's rational perspective, or turly wonderfully poetic Part5 sentences, the meaning of which totally depends on one's perspective. There'd be a fucking chaos. That is the very reason why all those TOEIC sentences should be all dead, meaning 'clear,' 'simple,' 'straightforward,' 'not poetic,' 'not artictic,' 'not ironic,' 'not sarcastic,' 'not humorous,' eyc. TOEIC sentences sound so much like the ones used in brochures, manuals, menus, flyers, etc., and that's exactly for the said reason. Well, Dr Mogi, thus, might be right about them, though it would've been more accurate had he put it as "DEAD Sandwich" or something.
Now some of those TOEICers might think they are fine with TOEIC sentences and in fact they are in love with them so much to the extent that they think they don't need anything else—any other English sentences especially from fancier highbrow materials such as novels, newspaper/newsmagazine articles, essays, blog posts, etc. There might be various reasons for that, but they are wrong. All the TOEIC learners must keep pushing themselves really hard to become much better so that they can up the ante on TOEIC books, which is truly essential in terms of making TOEIC itself better, eventually. . . bla, bla, bla.
But above all, seriously, it's wrong to limit your learning.
Try to be just a little arrogant to reconsider your beliefs and certainties so that you can have just a little critical awareness about yourself and what you are so certain of. Then you'll see, as my favorite novelist suggests, you can learn anything from anyone, including Haters. We are all learners and we have limitless possibilities. Learning is limitless. And learning is wonderful.
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No doubt is it totally a great innovative thing that there are many New-Type TOEICers out there right now in the twitterverse tweeting all those fantastically less-pedantic fantastic things, one of which is like how to become fluent and competent both in writing and speaking while fully availing oneself of whatever she/he learns from her/his experience in studying for TOEIC to achieve certain fantastic points like 900. Most notably, such a fantastically innovative fantastic thing normally would've never happened to the world under the sovereignity of the TOEIC fundamentalists, meaning that the age of TOEIC fundamentalusts has already gone (how the hell haven't I noticed that?) and the age of those New-Type TOEICers in the twitterverse has come. Literally, this is the dawning of the age of New-Type TOEICers! . . . though I'm very positive that they don't even consider themselves as TOEICers. (For which, I guess I have to reconsider the definition of TOEICer. Now it might be okay to dub someone a TOEICer even if she/he spends more time on speaking and writing and takes TOEIC only once or twice a year.)
As you all know full well, I am a hardcore hardcore-TOEICer-hater. I hate those TOEIC fundamentalists. I must sincerely admit I don't know much about the test itself, but as a senior hater for so long, I guess I know pretty much what TOEIC and TOEICers are/mean to learners and this whole English-learning academia in Japan, probably pretty much more than those TOEICers do. So I know what those New-Type TOEICers are doing to the learners and academia now, and to TOEIC itself. They are doing a truly fantastic job of giving TOEIC a new good name. Who knows, from 5, 6 years from now all the learners see TOEIC as the best EPT to learn basic stuff to achieve higher fluency and competence. Winning a reputation among learners like that is, I bet, what many of those TOEIC teachers have long hoped for. Who knows, in the very near future TOEICers all be regarded as such learners trying very hard to become fluent and competent both in writing and speaking, which is . . . .
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KIND OF ZEN?
So, what the hell was it really? I asked myself in the midst of the night—two-thirty in the morning—when I heard someone singing, all out of the fuckin blue, a famous AC/DC song dedicated to a singer who drunk himself to death, and as I was half deep asleep I sensed I kind of kept drifting in the ocean of the self-scrutiny in which I somehow managed to explore every possible aspect obscure enough to pull that all off, though nothing really came out after all those half-asleep self-scrutinies that went on for, like, 15 minutes. I myself don't usually drink—I'm a social drinker, so to speak—or I'd tried super hard to pull myself out from a life-long platinum member of Club AA or Club 'Night Train,' and now I wonder if that was like pretty much almost analogue to this whole unremitting contentious feeling inside that I've had for the last couple of months due to pretty much something related to something that has something to do with something that I'd done many months ago, meaning half of which is pretty much bullshit but the other half suggests a slightest obscure connection to both all these pieces that I posted here and all those words that I tweeted there pretty much for the sake of . . . well initially everyone reading them to have, hopefully, a moment of contemplation and also pretty much truly myself but . . . now I don't really know, because, as I look back now, I just can't tell for whom I'd kind of delved into and expounded on and deliberated over all these things inside my fucking head. I've had this unremitting contentious delirious feeling ever since, and yeah, it's so fucking true that I'm exaggerating a little bit but it's also so fucking true that the feeling is so fucking real and that I know full well that I'd never become able to subdue this unremitting contentious delirious feeling into others through these words and that I'd pretty much end up succumbing to it as if I were born subservient to this whole fuckin unremitting contentious delirious feeling that just fuckin now I've come to find myself entrapped, in a way on my own, which is really, really stupid considering the fact that I've known full well that life is so fucking stupid and I'm so small and all alone and fucking selfish since I was five. Seriously I was that precocious and enlightened that I thought to myself that life's so fucking stupid and I'm so small and all alone and fuckin selfish at the age of five! I was an extremely cute little thing back then, as you can so easily imagine, like, a boy every 5-year-old girl could fall and die for, and I must admit that I had pretty much the zenith of my girls-wise career at that age, and that just saying all this retrospective shit makes me feel like so pathetic inside and outside that I get to feel instantaneously like wanna quit the fucking earth, which indeed reminds me of a story in which an old man looking back past feeling as if he were a fucking dead fish looking back extolling himself how marvelous it was and how overwhelmingly fast it could swim but it's still fucking DEAD. So, I've got this whole fuckin unremitting contentious delirious feeling that keeps making me feel as if I were a fucking dead fish, and at this very fucking moment here I somehow come to think to myself that I wanna quit the fucking earth.
It's true it could be either like another self-conscious, self-destructive bullshit or something even more serious and delirious, which has a lot more to do with 'despair.' The notion behind 'despair' in this intellectually less-savvy blog has already become pretty much trite and has been overused for so long, but let me explain it one more time. Imagine this: You have a colossal mega stadium of your own right in the head, and the stadium is hermetically crammed with super boisterous fanatics of some kind (e.g. an issue that is contentiously vexed and charged, like learning English) waiting so long for this century's rambunctious Pipe Piper type of guy, whose three designated objectives include; a) mesmerizing all those super boisterous fanatics of some kind in your head (plus they're all so dangerously quixotic) with all those forbidden profanes pretty much out of his curmudgeon nature instead, b) instigating them to engage themselves in a 'jokingly self-destructive mass migration to death' type of self-mockingly tragic event—e.g. that of lemming—and c) veering the direction of their marching to the edge so that each one of those fanatics with a certain invincible panache would finally become able to pull their halos down and dive into the abyss of inescapable pipsqueak despair and of ever so clichéd, banalized loneliness, one by one, I mean, one by one, again, one by one. +Now, the best of all is, oh well, pretty ironically, that you sort of perceive all these harrowing events right in your own head, which is without doubt pretty much more thrilling, exciting and compelling than watching whatever happens right before your eyes, which is, oh well, y'know, understandable, kind of. Right? Anyway, while taking a flying leap with a certain Monty-Python-esque invincible, quixotic panache, each of those fanatics chants exact the same final words; "Passion! Devotion! Enthusiasm!" at which as perceiving them jumping off the edge one by one the Pipe Piper guy keep muttering nonchalantly to himself "HIT IT!" and the whole thing goes on and on till the stadium gets empty. I know full well that most of you guys—due all respect, 'commoners' with a very clear vision and a very sane mind—would never ever notice the existence of either such a colossal mega stadium or those super boisterous fanatics of some kind (or this very kind!), but once you embrace your other self—the crazy, highly enthused preposterous half, so to speak—and start listening very carefully to what it says to you the whole self, you'd get to behold what's happening at the edge right in your head every minute. Now what is really horrific and scary is the fact that that there's no one left there, in the stadium, inside your head, and you feel despair—you are now entrapped in the notion governed by the logic of despair.
The word "despair" is overused and banalized not only here but everywhere in the blogosphere, I guess. It is a serious word and my favorite novelist puts it like this: "It's close to what people call dread or angst, but it's not these things, quite. It's more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable sadness of knowing I'm small and weak and selfish and going, with doubt, to die. It's wanting to jump overboard." So, in a sort of pretty precocious way I've been trying to surmount the unbearable sadness of my being so small, so alone and so selfish, ever since I was a cute little 5-year-old good looking boy, by listening to the voices coming from other selves of mine 24 hours a day everyday, which explains why I've been so fucking surreally self-conscious for all these years. The voices that I heard when I was a kid said all kinds of different things—ethical, dogmatic, educational, intellectual, etc.—in different tones and moods, but now the voices I'm hearing are pretty much 100% 'sexual', saying so clearly and cogently "pussy, pussy, pussy" all the time and it's really truly sad that it just makes myself feel empty and aching despite the fact that I feel so monumentally energetic to the point that I literally get to feel the instantaneously extra-induced testosterone pumping to jump-start me as this whole well-built swimmer's body (in a pig's eye, sort of) starts oozing 'pussy' from every fucking pore! (And I don't know why!) No shit anything, but the truth to be told; literally the dick has got no fuckin time taking a brake drying it out, as you know, a famous Japanese proverb goes. Well, I hope you find it funny. I hope you don't find it offensive or anything, but, oh well, to be very honest, I would fucking care less—I wouldn't feel bad or guilty or anything even if I somehow end up making you feel either offended or bad or uncomfortable or lonely or desperate or sexy & horny or the mixture of all. See, neither am I here to fuckin pamper each of you coming here on your own nor I am here to become a cocksucker to you—unlike all those cock-sucking, ass-licking EPT loving brothers and sisters out there. I wouldn't mind kicking anyone's ass, and I'd very much engage myself doing so whenever I want to, and seriously I'm more like being here to either make you think or help you see things differently, sort of, the whole process of which, I bet, from time to time requisitely comes with 1) some hideous, disturbing thoughts to deliberate on and 2) some harrowing, disconcerting things to behold. Don't get me wrong; I am not talking about fucking rationality here. I'm simply talking about different thoughts, views and opinions, like, oh well, I'm more like, yeah, throwing all the different thoughts, views and opinions into blog posts and leave the judgment to you all coming here, or shit still, you don't even have to make judgments, I mean, just enjoy whatever here . . . if and only if you think you can possibly enjoy them! Isn't it kind of hilarious? Surely it'd take some serious commitment to enjoy whatever here, the concept behind which is kind of stupid, taking it into considering that only a few would come this far—whomever reading this very sentence wouldn't have been able to conquer the last fifteen hundred words or so hadn't they had some serious amount of commitment, which is pretty much what governs the whole readership-blogger policy here. Yes, I have to admit that the policy itself is kind of stupid, but please cut me some colossal slack for I'm genuinely stupid (but cute and everything!).
Now, I must let you guys all know that the mixture of aestheticism and knee-jerk knowingness is my central doctrine that exercises continuous sovereign authority over my whole decision and judgment. What that really means is that I like beautiful things. Well, I know full well that I don't have to use all these infectious profanes just to bring up and deliberate on different thoughts, ideas, views, etc. but it's just the elements of style, so to speak, though, to be honest, I'm not really sure what that shit really means. It just sounds cool, "the elements of style," which sounds kind of noble and elegant and definitely has some sort of Anglo-French-ish redolence to it, and again I don't know what that Anglo-French shit really means, but 'style' is what it is—the elements of style! And I'm kind of serious about it. I truly believe that beautiful things are beautiful for reasons as it is conspicuously true when it comes to beautiful English sentences, and I think it'd be the single most colossal and tragic loss in the name of learning English if you aren't aware of that, or if you'd just avert your eyes from that, or if you aren't learning the English language the way that makes you become good enough to appreciate the beauty of those English sentences. It'd be tragically sad and stupid and, yeah, mostly sad if you only see the mechanics of English sentences—how they work grammatically or, to be more precise, synthetically. Now, you might wanna argue that unless you know the English language both synthetically and semantically well, you wouldn't be able to appreciate how beautiful its sentences really are (the notion behind of which has been overused in the various attempts of justifying the negligence of knowing), but here we must bethink ourselves that unlike those computer languages, the English language has its particular sound and rhythm, meaning that you'd be able to appreciate the sound and rhythm of beautiful English sentences if you'd just close your eyes and accept whatever as it is. . . . And . . . I don't know what the fuch I am talking about now. . . .
To Be Continued. . . .
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It might sound outrageous and stupid and less patriotic but I haven't eaten steamed rice (or any type or form of rice) for weeks. I am not on a strict low-carbohydrate diet or anything but sort of on a non-rice-eating diet, knowing, through my experience, that 100g of rice makes me much fatter than 200g of pasta. Don't get me wrong; I'm not fat or anything. Okay? In fact I'm in a good shape, but I just wanna be 'on' something reasonably challenging to make it from mere 'good' to fucking 'great'!
That's me, I guess, who's got this thing inside that keeps pushing myself ardently and tenaciously for a long period of time to make something happen. I don't know if it has anything to do with a special 'talent' or 'ability' that I possess or that I have developed. I'd just assume anyone learning English has 'that thing' inside that makes him or her keep going on, meaning I'm not special—just a mere learner.
The thing is, I guess, you really have to avail yourself of 'that thing' to keep doing one particular thing—such as learning English—for a long time, and to do so you need a colossal amount of aspiration, desire, enthusiasm, etc. You must keep aspiring and craving in order to achieve whatever conceptually truly abstract, such as dreams, goals, becoming better, etc. in your English-learning life.
Craving something tangible or something conceptually easily imaginable, especially something you love, is easy.* For instance, no one finds it difficult to crave ice-cream because it's easy to visualize it and imagine its taste. (And who hates ice-cream, right?) No one finds it difficult to crave dipping oneself into the nice hot water filled bath tab on the freezing night, the consequences of which are easily imaginable. (* You'd never crave something you don't know—something you've never had, seen, heard of and thought of. You only crave something you know.)
You don't crave your improvements in English like you crave ice-cream or hot-bath. Or simply you can't do so, for the concept of 'becoming better' is too abstract and vague to have clear visions of its consequences. You imagine yourself becoming better, for instance, in speech, but you wouldn't know exactly what it'd be like that you 'yourself' become super-fluent in speech, because at that moment you aren't good enough to know it, which is why learning a language is much harder than learning to play something tangible.
The moment you start playing the guitar, you'd get to have an idea how hard it'd be to be a great guitarist. You keep playing the instrument everyday for two, three months, you'll get to have at least some ideas about what it'd be like to be a great guitarist. You'd find it so much easier to aspire and crave to become a great guitarist than a great speaker of English simply because it's much easier to imagine and visualize what it'd take to become one, what it'd be like to be one, and what consequences or rewards it'd bring to you when you become one.
So 'that thing' should be the ability to imagine what it'd take to make it happen and what you'd get from it. If you wanna keep learning English for a long time and become very fluent and competent, you need to have it or you need to brush it up to make it really sharp so that you can imagine what it'd be like when you become very fluent and competent. You keep craving and aspiring to become one, is what you need so direly.
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There are so many things I have to do to make my English much better. I don't mean to brag about the competence and fluency I possess but I must admit that I think making my English just a little bit better takes me so much more of pretty much everything than what making their English much better takes non-advanced learners. Well, yes, the old cliche turns out to be so true: the better your English becomes, the harder it gets to make it much better, which is because it gets much harder to find what makes it better as you get better. And I'm sure it's just not me feeling that way. There must be millions of advanced learners feeling the same as I do.
What's interesting here is that it seems a bit contradictory to the fact that advanced learners do not often give up learning English as easily as other learners do. If it's indeed much easier for beginners to become better, for instance, how come many of them give up learning English relatively easily? Well, yes, that might be because I only speak retrospectively. Those beginners do not know it now; they'll get to know it only much later when they become much advanced.
Also, 'becoming better' itself might not really be a major concern for many other learners, especially for those who'd quit learning English before they become really good. They might have many other concerns to which they give higher priorities, like joy, happiness, fun, excitment, entertainment, amusement, friendship, etc. They might want to become good enough to get whatever they prioritize highly, but becoming better itself might not be so important. Learning English for them might not be just learning the English language but it might have more to do with having fun, happiness, friendship, etc. that they can't get much from their daily lives.
Well, there must be many learners who became really good that way while being gregarious a bit and having so much joy and happiness learning English with friends, so I'm not gonna just deny and refute such a way of learning. To be honest, I always believe it's good to have English learning friends with whom you motivate one another to go on learning more, but the overdependance of such friendships is always harmful, and such friendships don't usually last for a long period of time. Personally, I'd just stay away. Or, I always try to be such a learner who doesn't need such friends to keep pushing myself for more.
Anyway, we all know it's really hard to become aware of your own improvements when you are actually in the transitional period of becoming better. It's usually after you've made a significant improvement that you come to know or realize just a little bit of your own improvement. Meaning, the whole concept of knowing improvements itself is, again, retrospective, something you'd only know as you look back after a certain long period of time.
And what the hell is 'becoming better' anyway? My idea of becoming better is pretty much like becoming to know more words, phrases and sentence constructions and becoming able to use them properly in writing and speech. That's one of the reasons why I keep reading same writers' essays and articles on the same newspapers and newsmagazines so that I get to know my improvements a bit more clearly. Getting used to great writers' choices of words, phrases and sentences itself, for me, amounts to a bit of improvement, and that is pretty much one way of learning to become better.
Your idea might be different. Yours might be how well you do in English proficiency tests such as TOEIC, and which is why you need TOEIC to measure and assure your improvements. Some of you might even conclude that you take TOEIC mainly for that particular reason. You might like it that way, but I don't. Well, I don't 100% deny it has some good points, such as the simplicity and convenience in the form that evaluates your skills and abilities in numbers, but still, for me, it just shows how you do in just one particular test.
Basically, I don't like the idea of letting others judge the degree of my improvements. Also, as they are commonly known, EPTs only measure a tip of your skills and abilities. It is very dangerous to keep letting EPTs have the power to evaluate your English because you soon get to feel as if they were right about your English all the way, not just about a tiny part of it.
For instance, as TOEIC keeps rejecting you, you might come to think as if your whole English skills and abilities were rejected by the test. As you keep taking it many times a year for several years, it gets much harder to remember the fact that it only measures a tiny part of your English. Eventually it gets you, so insidiously so to the extent that it comes to convince you that TOEIC is the judge. It's a trap that gives you no sense of being entrapped. You soon start studying only for the test, because TOEIC is the judge, the credential of which you only believe in for evaluating your English. And the fact that TOEIC doesn't not measure your whole skills and abilities will no more come across your mind.
I think it's bad to ignore your own skills and abilities that TOEIC does not measure, even just for reading and listening comprehension skills. As I have said this more than gazillion times, I started reading NYT articles from the very beginning of my English learning career more than 25 years ago. There was no internet, no DVDs, no pretty much anything except newspapers and paperbacks and videos back then. For me, how much I kept reading one NYT article at a time was how I measured my reading skills back then at the beginning, and only much later it became how well and fast I read one article.
As I look back I think I was right about this whole process of evaluating my improvements. I feel more like I'm lucky that I've never been one of those learners who'd just let others judge their English. In a weird sense I myself have been the harshest, the most atrocious critic or judge on my own English, and I believe I'm the only one who can really tell how much I become better. Well, I think anyone can be one's own judge, though it'd be a bit more painful than letting others do it for him or her.
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If I took TOEIC and it turned out I got like 800, would you be happy? Would you be all excited and go on ranting about it like "He had shitty 800! He's a fucking idiot! I've never seen such a pathetic loser like him!"?
First of all, I know full well that no one really cares about it now. (Well, if this had been like three years ago, it would've been a totally different story.) But for the sake of this intellectually less sophisticated argument here, let me just imagine there are several hardcore TOEIC lovers still out there who are dying to know how I do in TOEIC.
I guess some of them would become raputurous. They'd be so happy & joyous to hear the news that I have 'only' 800. They'd go ranting and raving about how stupid and shameful I am to have assailed TOEIC lovers with all these atrocious, malign & hideous words and phrases, while proving myself that my English isn't good enough to get even 900. (Well, it wouldn't be so bad to go for exactly 800 just in an attempt to make such learners happy and joyous, well, if and only if there were learners like them.)
Some others might wonder why I ended up with only 800 points. Their speculations would go around from 'accidental' (like, I just hadn't known the test enough for the lack of preparation, or I was taken with monumentally severe diarrhea while taking the test, or something), through 'intentional' (like, I somehow wanted to get the points around the range for I'm just basically stupid and crazy) to 'professional' (like, I was secretly hired by someone to do some research on the test). They'd smell some conspiracy there anyhow.
I guess there would also be such learners who'd become angry. I bed such people are among those who secretly come here and secretly read my posts often. They would be monumentally pissed at me for turning their expectations into a monumental disappointment and even embarrassment, e.g. making myself the butt of lame TOEICer-hater jokes, etc. They might feel betrayed, realizing that all the things I've said about me with regard to my being fraudulent are indeed so fucking true. They'd regret that they've spent so much energy and time on my pieces which after the announcement would possess no credibility.
Well, most of you here wound give no shit about me getting 500 or 900. Right? Meanwhile, I'll never ever take TOEIC, so you are all safe. Good night!
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"One thing I'm sure is that all those learners and teachers who reject the idea of learning to become fluent and competent DO NOT want you to become fluent and competent in English."
Have you ever thought about the future of English-learning here in Japan very seriously? I think about it a lot, very seriously. I think about it all the time, and I believe there are many things we can do to make much brighter and optimistic the future of English-learning in Japan. For instance, we can talk a lot about it online. We can talk so much more about learning English (to gain competence and to become fluent in writing and speech) in the blogosphere and twitterverse so that all the English learners here get to read about it and hopefully think about it. And the impact and influence of online messages must be so huge as we all know almost everyone learning English spends a great amount of English-learning time in the blogosphere, twitterverse, etc. If one thousand advanced-level learners keep talking about it to encourage other learners to learn to gain competence and fluency, while rejecting and refuting the idea of learning English just for grammar quizzes, listening comprehension and vocabulary, it'll definitely be much brighter ten years from now.
Yes, I wonder why such learners still exist who still think it's okay to learn English mainly for listening and reading skills in this day and age. This day and age we're coming to! I wonder if such learners have never heard of those learners in other Asian countries who are very much right now learning to become competent and fluent in every aspect in English while availing themselves of all the on-line things—services, devices, etc.—that have made 'learning English' much easier? I wonder how different I am from such learners in Japan. Am I that different from them? Am I that different as it might even have something to do with the DNA-level difference? Could it even possibly be the case where the language-learning genes that learners like me share subconsciously urge us to go for competence and fluency while such genes of learners like those guys either don't send such signals or don't have a proper receptor to receive such signals? Am I really that different from them?
And are we really okay that we are so different? Are we really okay that there are many learners who agree with such horrible notions as 1) not every learner has to learn English to become competent and fluent or 2) you can still enjoy your English-learning life without learning speaking and writing? The proponents of such notions among learners and teachers are typically hardcore TOEICers, and I believe they have their own arguments within their own TOEICotic purview. They rarely—if really ever—talk to or email other TOEIC buddies in English, meaning that the process of speaking and writing does not exist in their everyday English-learning lives, yet they are still—they'd claim—having happy English-learning lives. That might be true, but are we okay with this? It's clear they DO NOT want you to be fluent and competent. Are we really okay with them? There's a TOEIC teacher-ish guy out there who thinks that way, who thinks you shouldn't be worried about speaking and writing, who wants you to be so pathetically incompetent and totally fucked-up in writing and speech in English just like he is. That's what he wants.
Now anyone can become a teacher in the blogosphere, which has typically been the case for TOEIC teacher-ish ones. All they need is knowledge and 990; no competence, no fluency or no license is required to be online TOEIC teachers. The issue here is obviously they often get to have too much influence on other learners with regard not only to TOEIC but also to learning English in general, which is pretty scary. Well, some of them might be pretty good, with competence and fluency that overwhelm that of those renowned teachers, but others are pretty bad, whose competence and fluency in writing and speech in English are morally and ethically questionable at best, surreally fucked-up on average and so bad that they should be criminalized at worst. Are we really okay with them? No, we are not.
We DON'T need such teachers who think it's okay to live one's English-learning life without learning to speak and write fluently, and who don't really care about the future of his or her students in terms of English. Do they think about the future of English-learning here? No, they don't. Do they want all of the learners of English here in Japan to become extremely competent and fluent? No, they don't. They don't care.
Meanwhile, I do really care and I do think about the future of English-learning here in Japan all the time.
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If every one else quit learning English but you, so that you were the only one learning English here in Japan, would you still keep learning it? I definitely would. As long as I'm interested in the English language, I definitely would keep learning English. And the importance and popularity of the language would never affect my passion, devotion and enthusiasm toward it, meaning even if English became a less popular, truly minor language at least here in Japan, I would still love to keep learning it. Even if there were no learning material available for me here in Japan, I'd be pretty much just doing the same. Conditions like that would make no differece at all.
I'm not the only one, I guess. There are so many learners out there who think the same way as I do. They are typically those learners who are less dependant on circumstancial factors, such as learning materials available to them or learning friends accessible to them, whick makes them less vulnerable and less susceptible to the loss of such, meaning they'd keep learning English regardless of materials available or friends accessible.
I need learning materials, but I don't need those workbooks and vocab books. I don't need those English-learning books. I can get my materials on the Internet anytime I want pretty much for free, which include all those articles, esseys, stories, etc. written by really cool professional L1 writers. And I am not saying it isn't a good idea to learn English with nice learning friends with passion and devotion. In fact I do think it's a great idea to have such friends, but it'd become an issue if you are over-dependant on such friends to the point that you can't keep learning English without them, which is . . . simply stupid, totally airheaded.
I guess most of those hardcore TOEICers are such people who can't keep studying for TOEIC without TOEICer buddies. How many of those TOEICers do you think would keep studying TOEIC even if there were no one else studying for TOEIC? How many of those TOEICers do you think would keep studying TOEIC even if there were no TOEIC test anymore and thus there were no TOEIC book written in Japanese available here? I'd say NONE, and I'm so fucking sure I'm pretty much right about it. No?
There are gazillion reasons why I hate TOEICers, but what I say in the previous paragraph is pretty much one of the dominant reasons. They keep saying they love TOEIC, but what they love about TOEIC isn't the test itself. In fact they don't really care about the test. What they love & care is TOEIC communities, and it's clear that they would stop taking TOEIC and stop studying for it if there were no TOEIC community in Japan. If there were no one else taking TOEIC in Japan, if there were no one else studying for TOEIC, if there were no one else in the blogosphere and twitterverse talking about TOEIC in Japanese, they would not take TOEIC and study for it. What kind of love is that? An extremely conditional love? They love it only when they know there are many other people who also love it.
I think they are wrong. I think they are wrong not only morally and ethically but also in zillion different English-learning ways. I guess those hardcore TOEICers think guys like me are exceptional, but they are wrong again; they are the ones who are truly eccentric & exceptional in the global standard. When you are in love with, say, Icelandic (the North Germanic language of Iceland) and are learning the language, it doesn't matter if there are Icelandic-learning communities or learning materials available here in Japan, and the absence of such communities or materials would never affect your affection toward the language. Love should be unconditional.
Those hardcore TOEICers are so wrong to say they love TOEIC because their love for TOEIC is strictly conditional. Their love for TOEIC isn't real. Their love is so fucking fake.
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Spring has come. Little funny things are in the air. Can you see them? Or can you feel them? Sometimes I do little funny things like create my own little section in one shelf at BookOff. What I mean by that is that I pick books I like and place them together at one cornor in the shelf, hoping that it make things much easier for some cool people with highly selective taste to recognize them and pick them up. I mean, first of all, there should be a plenty of such cool people around here, and thus these books, all priced \200 to \350, should be gone immediately. Well, they should've been gone immediately.
I have all of them. I mean, if I didn't have any of them, I'd just buy it right away. The point is, I want others—hopefully learners of English—to have them and read them and learn so many things from them. And it's really sad these books have been left un-picked for days. Some of them must've been even untouched.
Those learners waste so much time, enegy and money for all those piss-poor borderline garbage workbooks. I hope they soon come to realize that. I hope they soon come to also realize how stupid & retarded it is that they are all freaky borderline garbage collectors of those garbage workbooks. Seriously, workbook collectors? That must be the worst way to contribute to the global warning! Get the fuck out! Or, seriously, we might as well wipe them all out for the sake of environmental protection, our future, whatever!
All these books in my secret section kind of look desperate and sad. All these great books written by great novelists look desperate and sad, which is a pretty much disconcerting thing to behold. I know very soon I won't be able to take it anymore. I know I'll go get at least a couple of them in about a couple of days, even though I already have them. Well, I'll just give them away to someone who'd appreciate them really.
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There might be good lies, and to some extent we all need lies to make our lives easier, which we as grown-ups all know full well. Sometimes you need to lie to yourself to make your life a bit easier, a bit less lonely, a bit more productive, a bit . . . whatever.
I don't lie to myself when it comes to learning English. Probably that might be one of the main reasons why learning English has been so special and so important in my life. I don't have to lie to myself to learn English, or I can be lie-free as long as I'm learning English. I can be absolutely sincere to myself.
When it comes to the matter of English learning, I can say 'yes' and 'no' directly to anyone without feeling guilty of making him or her feel bad. I can be horrible. I can be mean. I can be anything as long as I'm being honest and sincere to myself with regard to learning English.
In short, I feel absolutely free to be myself. Absolute freedom. I feel terrible when I see others giving away such freedom in exchange for various profits. I don't wanna have anything to do with them. I hope they don't wanna have anything to do with me.
Some think those are good lies, good necessary requisite lies that would make our English learning lives much easier and help make our lives more productive and fulfilling. I just don't need those things—lies good or bad. I just wanna stay away from those who need such lies. I just wanna keep one tiny part of my life lie-free.
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