Our names are Madoka, Haracchi, Tomi, and Yoshimi. We are students at Kwansei Gakuin University, which is located in Nishinomiya, Japan, between Osaka and Kobe. We are now taking a course in Intermediate English in the Intensive English Program. We study English because English is now a common language all over the world, so we need English to talk with many people from different countries. For this class, we had to choose a topic about something we wanted to know more about American culture or American student life. We then had to interview an American student about this topic and compare our image with their answers. Our partner was Christopher, who is a business management major at Canisius University. The topic we chose was jobs. We chose this topic because we want to know what American students think about jobs and work.
The answers we got from our partner changed our image about the US somewhat. On a scale from 1 to 5, if 1 means it didn’t change our image at all and 5 means it changed our image of the US on this topic, we would say the number 3. The most surprising answer we got from our partner was that it is common for graduating students to go out into the work force for a few years and then enter graduate school.
By exchanging email with an American student, we could also learn some new things about American society. The most interesting piece of information we got from our partner was that some American students take some time off after they graduate.
Since we are studying English now, we could also learn some new vocabulary from our partner. Some new words or expressions we learned are strive, which means to work hard for something; resume, which means one’s personal job history; and get out into (i.e. the work force), which means to go out and do or join something.
We would like to thank our partner for taking the time to help us with this assignment. We also hope they can visit Japan someday and learn more about Japanese culture.
# posted by Johninjapan @ 6:25 AM
