Embrace Uncertainty (English)

This English version is provided for reference purposes only.
Target Audience: Intermediate & Advanced

Embracing uncertainty is an integral part of any learning experience, but it holds true especially for learning a second language.
To learn a second language, we need to embrace the fact that we will not understand everything. This does not mean that we should give up on learning or ignore the basic grammar and vocabulary. It meas that while we learn the basics, we should aim for a language at a higher level than ours for the most effective learning. In such processes we should learn to take educated guesses.

For that purpose, we will read sentences that have been composed primarily for the purpose of communicating ideas, instead of ones intended for language learners. We are successful in the task if we feel that we can in fact understand better than we expected.

We will use Ms. Emma Watson's Faceboo post as an examplel (Intermediate).



"Thank you to everybody who went out and saw our film Beauty and the Beast! I saw so many lovely photos of families at the cinema together (here’s a pic of me and my on-screen Dad, the wonderful Kevin Kline) and also so many cute Belle costumes! I hope you all enjoyed it. Love, Em x"

Since this is an actual use of English, there may be unfamiliar proper nouns and expressions that are not seen on textbooks.

• our film "Beauty and the Beast": Even if we don't understand what this is, we can infer that this is a movie that Ms. Watson acted in, from "our film."
• "Pic" in "here's a pic of me and my on-screen Dad" is probably a slang expression. Even if we don't know this word, we can imagine that it's a contraction of "picture" from the fact that there is a picture and the word "photos."
• "on-screen Dad" is a way of saying "Dad on the screen." The name Kevin Kline is in the following sentence, so we can guess that this is someone who costarred in the movie.

We will take a look at another post by Ms. Watson (Advanced).

"Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and humanitarian. Born into slavery in 1822, she escaped and subsequently rescued around seventy enslaved families and friends. After the American Civil War she became an active participant in the struggle for women’s suffrage. #IWD #IWDOurSharedShelf #ADayWithoutAWoman The Book Fairies"

• abolitionist: From the expressions "slavery", "1822", "escaped", "rescued", "American Civil War," we can guess what it is referring to.
• subsequently: The sequence "in 1822," "she escaped and," and "After the American Civil War she became...." gives a clue that history is described chronologically.

For the purpose of reading without looking up the language, no Japanese translation is given here. For those who are still interested in Japanese translation, we recommend that you first take an educated guess of the meaning and then look for the translation. This way, it will stay in your memory.

We have looked at expressions such as "pic," "on-screen Dad," "abolitionist," "subsequently." The tsk is successful if you could take a vague guess without consulting a resource. The Internet has plenty of resources that are intended for real communication such as this. If we follow websites or pages that we are interested in, we will get to immerse ourselves in English. It will lead to a greater amount of input and we can expect a synergy with study of more basic language uses. For that to happen, we will first need to embrace uncertainty.

External Website (Advanced)

• 10 Ways to Embrace Uncertainty (Part 2)

This seems to be a self-help webpage which discusses the concept of embracing uncertainty, from a broader perspective of life.

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