Yesterday was Christmas Eve, and I had a quiet relaxing day, mostly spent at home. I woke up around 9 a.m., had a shower, and wrote a journal entry in English, which took me around two hours. As usual, I had my journal entry proofread by ChatGPT in both American and British English. Luckily, not so many errors were detected this time - I just made one glaring mistake involving the usage of a definite article near the end of my journal entry.
Once again, I noticed that my writing gets fewer corrections in British English than American, demonstrating that my written English is more closely aligned with the former compared to the latter. I honestly don’t know why it’s the case, because since I was very young I’ve always preferred American English, mainly due to the way it sounds and my general feeling of adoration for American pop culture, such as music and movies.
To this day, I still think that the U.S. has the coolest and most cutting-edge culture in the world, despite its numerous problems like gun violence and drug addiction. The good thing is, with the high-speed Internet and streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, there is more than enough American content that I can enjoy here in Singapore without visiting the States.
Given the recent strong exchange rate of the US Dollar, it’s gotten considerably more expensive to travel to America. I think I can make do with virtually enjoying American culture through streaming services for the time being.
Speaking of American English, last night I watched the YouTube interview of a Japanese woman called Hana who currently resides on the East Coast of the U.S. with her American husband. What’s remarkable about Hana is that she speaks English with native fluency with no accent, despite being born and raised in Japan. I actually mentioned this video in my previous blog entry, but it's definitely worth revisiting, so please indulge me:
In the interview, she talks about her experience of growing up in the countryside where there are very few foreigners around. She studied English through virtual means, such as watching American shows with English subtitles and posting her writings on language-exchange websites to have them amended and learn from her mistakes.
Whenever she came across words that she didn’t know, she would stop the video, look them up in the dictionary, and then resume watching. She also mentions that she talked to herself a lot to improve her ability to speak English.
That certainly sounds like a lot of work, but she somehow persisted in her efforts and eventually became fluent in English. Chika, the interviewer, who is herself bilingual in English and Japanese, remarked that Hana’s English sounds more native-like than hers in the sense that she uses expressions that only Americans would know, showcasing her in-depth knowledge of vernacular American speech.
Hana responded that it might be due to the enormous amounts of YouTube that she watches daily. She constantly incorporates new expressions into her knowledge and tries them out at the earliest opportunity she gets.
There are definitely a thing or two that I can learn from her experiences in studying English. It’s just the question of whether to put them into practice to give my English that extra boost it needs to elevate it to a new level.
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