Friday was 'presentation day'. Sketchbook, essays... you name it, we presented it. Yup, I was a wreck before Friday, but as soon as I walked out of those University doors, I was skipping! I cant imagine how hard it must be for the overseas Uni students, especially with essay writing and presentations. I always manage to stumble on a couple of words when presenting, and its my native language.
There's a Japanese girl in my class. Ever since I told her that I lived in Japan last year she seems to be avoiding me like the plague. There could be a million and one reasons for this, one is, maybe its just coincidence, or maybe I'm letting my brain do overtime. Tell you the truth, I dont really care. But I do care when other people are cruel.
Her English might not be at the same level as most other Japanese University students Ive met. But she is damn brave to do this in the first place. She stumbled on her words on Fridays presentation. Under pressure, she tried to calm herself by mumbling things in Japanese. She picked herself up and started her presentation again only to pronounce some things wrong. A girl starts laughing. Then another. A guy runs out the class because he is embarrassed he is laughing. He damn should be.
Doing a presentation in front of lots of people in English for a native speaker is hard enough.
Imagine if you had to do it in Japanese.
4 件のコメント:
wow thats horrible :( why would they laugh? are they 5 year olds in your class?
Nick
I dont know. I couldnt believe it & felt so bad for her.
I feel as though I should help her as she struggles with her English, but ... I find her kind of scary...
...and then theres the fact that she avoids me!
That's quite awful.
People really have no idea. I remember doing speeches at schools to introduce myself in Japan and getting it so, so wrong. No one was cruel, no-one was nasty and everyone politely glossed over it. And yet it's actually the British who are famous for this kind of behaviour despite it apparently being untrue.
To the people that laughed at at that girl, what utter fscking fscktards. I wish I were there I would have told them to shut the fsck up and if they never I'd have clipped them all on the head.
The most likely reason the girl is avoiding you is that she's afraid you'll just want to keep talking in Japanese and 'using' her as a practice person.
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