Credo

2 décembre 2005

Une fois n'est pas coutume, aujourd'hui je vais vous parler en anglais !
La semaine dernière, 3 élèves sont venus me demander d'écrire un article pour la revue du lycée. Enfin, revue n'est pas exactement le mot le plus adapté, car c'est presque un livre et il n'y a qu'un exemplaire par an. Et chaque année, les ALTs et les ryugakusei 留学生 (comprenez les étudiants étrangers en programme d'échange) sont sollicités pour écrire un petit quelque chose. Je vous livre donc un passage de mon texte :

Speaking foreign languages, a passport to the world…

(…)
I love teaching you English and French. By teaching two languages, I feel like I’m teaching the world… Speaking English will be your passport to go anywhere and to be understood. I’m not a native English speaker, I learned at school, exactly like you. But I also learned by watching movies, reading books and traveling.
How exiting it is to communicate with people! Through communication with people from all over the world, you’ll understand better their cultures and their differences, their richness should I say. And to be able to communicate, the most important is speaking.
Even if you’re making mistakes, you can communicate. The more you try (even with mistakes at the beginning), the more you’ll improve your English. Speak, speak, SPEAK, don’t miss the opportunity of speaking, and don’t be afraid. To learn, the keys are your curiosity and your motivation. With these keys, you will open so many doors that you’ll be surprised yourself. It works for everybody.
And that’s true not only for English, but for all the languages, of course. I experienced it myself too when I arrived in Japan two years ago: at that time, I couldn’t speak Japanese at all, but after a few months only, I was able to have a daily conversation, because I really needed it and I had the will to learn.
Until now, my best experience at school was training the advanced students in French for a skit contest. They only had two weeks for preparation, and they worked very hard to remember and perform on stage a short play in French. They were very motivated: it was a real challenge for them, more difficult than anything I ever asked them in French class. And even if they didn’t get any prize at the end, they tried, and that’s the most important. I was very proud of them for that.
So I won’t repeat it enough, TRY and SPEAK. You have the chance to have in your school four ALT and many exchange students from all over the world, so jump at the opportunity!!!
Do your best, in anything you do.
A famous man during French Revolution called Danton said “de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace”, which means “daring, more daring, still more daring”. Make this motto yours, and don’t be afraid to try!