こんにちは！
わたしは天徳(てんとく)です。アメリカ人です。

My goal for studying Japanese is to converse with my elderly Taiwanese grandma-in-law. I’m going to meet her next year, and need to learn either Taiwanese (臺語) or Japanese if I am going to speak with her (She’s over 90 so she didn’t learn Mandarin as a young girl). I feel like this is a rather concrete goal, with a pay-off to strive for.

My secondary goal is to learn Japanese to be a better ESL teacher. I sometimes find myself with Japanese students, and I want to be able to help them better. I need to know Japanese so that I can more easily grade their vocab tests and also explain classroom expectations in their native language.

My third goal is that I want to read children’s stories in Japanese. I love reading kids books in foreign languages, and I think that reading kids books would be great for a second language Japanese learner. This would help me improve my kanji recognition and greatly raise my overall levels of happiness.

If you have any feedback, please share.

Best wishes,
天徳