The above question is often raised by both teachers and students of foreign languages in Japan and elsewhere and it reminds me of a story about a famous teacher. One day this teacher walked into his class and wrote a list of key words on the board including: teacher, materials, methodology, other students, educational institute, and so on. He then invited his students to choose the word that each of them felt was most important for success in their learning. Stop and think about this yourself for a moment. After much discussion and many interesting answers he then said, "the most important ingredient in your language learning success is not in this list. Instead it is you and your ability to have clear learning goals, work actively, and to be excited about your learning. You make all the difference!" After more than 10 years of experience teaching and learning languages I agree that although there are many important contributing external factors to our success in language learning (like in the list above), the most important ingredient is internal and under our own control: it is ourselves.

In order to help you to become a more successful language learner I will encourage you to reflect on your learning and to work consistently and energetically to improve and expand your knowledge, attitude, skills, and awareness in connection with English. Although we may never discover the best way to learn language, we will nevertheless learn lots in the process. I invite you to consider the critical importance of your own role in the process as a first step and will leave you with the following quote by Lloyd Alexander: "We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding the answer than we do from learning the answer itself."