皆さん、はじめまして！
スチュアート・リードと申します。ニュージーランドから参りました。どうぞよろしくお願いします。
Hi all!
My name is Stuart Reid, I'm a kiwi who was based in Melbourne from 2013 - 2015 during which time I met Kumi sensei. For a couple of years up until then I had been teaching myself Japanese using the Genki textbook series, Heisig method, watching Japanese dramas/anime and utilising other free online resources. I had made good progress this way, but one day realised that I had hit a wall. Even though I was getting up every day at 4:00am to study Japanese before work, the amount of vocab and grammar had seemingly become too large for me to remember. I found that when it came to speaking, I couldn't recall a lot of recently studied grammar and new which resulted in me needing to repeatedly go over the same points. I felt that I'd reached the limit of self-study... I used to be so proud about the progress I'd made without paying for lessons up until that point, but came to my sensei and decided to find an environment in which to use my hard-learned Japanese, otherwise my progress would remain slow and I'd become frustrated. To become fluent in Japanese and achieve my dream of living and working in Japan, it was clear that I needed to find a good teacher to converse with, one who could keep me on the right track, provide me with important cultural insights, make learning some of the more tedious grammar lots of fun, and most of all, provide communicative environment to reinforce my studies in a practical way. I approached the largest Japanese language school in Melbourne hoping to find such a teacher. I was introduced to Kumi sensei, and from our first session I knew she was the one. She is so friendly, warm, funny, approachable and engaging. She is also very diligent in keeping her students on task and providing a super productive lesson. I jumped at the chance to sign up with her for a term, and it wasn't long after that I was able to converse using Japanese, an ability that I had seemingly gained overnight - it felt like the grammar had finally fallen into place within my brain and was accessible when speaking on the fly. This was no doubt largely influenced by the environment that Kumi sensei provided. She also helped me to write a speech and prepare for a job interview in Japan, thanks to her I got he job! I highly recommend Kumi sensei to anyone who'd kike to learn about Japan, it's language and awesome culture; I know they will love her as much as I do!
孔美先生、本当に本当にありがとうございました！
Stuart