Difficulty of Speaking out.
The new optional discussion class has started today. We already have many English classes, but the chances to discuss in English are limited in the class. For one thing, we have to study not only discussion but other skills such as writing or reading. The other, there are many people in the class to have a discussion class. At Coe, over 15 to 20 students will be considered big class. As I talked before, we are at most 25 students in the class, but the average is about 15 students. So, anyway, it is not suitable for discussion. On the other hand, in this optional class, there are only 4 students and 1 faculty. This is unbelievably small. Each student is able to state own opinion freely. It will be the best circumstance to have a discussion.
Today, we talked about the suicide in Japan. Last week, a curious incident happened. Nine people, who haven窶冲 met before each other, committed a suicide together in the car using the charcoal stoves. This type of suicide is relatively well-known in Japan. People get to know each other through the Internet, and go somewhere just to kill themselves.
We, at first, talked about the cause of the extremely high suicide rate in Japan, and then, discussed the countermeasure. One of the causes would be the mental illness, but in Japan, people are reluctant to go to the mental hospital, because of the prejudice against the patients.
There are few schools have a counselor for the students; it is not so common still now. This is because it's very difficult to get a counselor窶冱 license in Japan. It requires having a master degree, and passing the examination. We had talked about something like above for 50 minutes.
One thing I felt through this class is that I have a difficulty to jump into the discussion. In other words, it needs a lot of energy for me to take part in the discussion with interrupting someone窶冱 speaking. I always look for a chance to speak out, but the argue flows somewhere else before I join it. Eventually, I listen to the others窶� speaking almost all the time. My teacher also noticed I didn窶冲 talk so much.
As for me, the purpose of the optional class is to solve this problem. I guess I cannot say anything in the class with English-speaking students. I want to try to say something, hopefully good opinions, in this class every time.