Yukiko d'Eon has only been a member of The Linguist since October, 2005 and she has already earned the title of Linguist Learner of the Month. She regularly spends time participating in all The Linguist activities. She is 32 years old and lives in Kagoshima City, Japan. She is a full-time office worker at an agricultural wholesale company and she has been learning English since junior high school. Yukiko has tried to improve her English for many years. She took English conversation classes for two hours a week for one year and she also took private English lessons. Although these were fun, she said they were not very challenging, they were too expensive and she had a long commute to her class.
Yukiko goes on to explain that she never had an opportunity to actually speak English until she graduated from university. This was because in junior high school, high school and university she mainly learned grammar, how to translate into English, and techniques to pass tests.
She explains: Although I don't deny that these traditional ways work to a certain extent, I think The Linguist system works much better, especially for intermediate and advanced learners. At first, I was puzzled by the fact that there were no translations for the texts and that there were no highlighted or underlined words that were considered important, but as I studied more and more content, I began to notice useful words and phrases on my own.
When I asked her if she thought her English had improved since becoming a member of The Linguist, Yukiko said that her reading had gotten faster and that she gets less frustrated when she watches English TV programs that do not have subtitles. Furthermore, her husband, who is Canadian, said that she seems to be more confident and relaxed when she speaks English. Yukiko believes that receiving feedback from the discussions and having her writing corrected has helped her to learn from her mistakes and helped to keep her motivated.
Finally, Yukiko is a member of the THY discussion group, which meets once per week. Each week a different member of the group gets to choose the topic for the discussion. He or she also prepares some questions for the others to think about in advance. Yukiko said that she has studied many content items that she wouldn't have chosen to study on her own, but found most of them interesting nonetheless. She goes on to say that she finds it very rewarding to receive comments from the tutor and to exchange ideas with other members of the group.
