Confidence

An ex-student of mine dropped in on me yesterday to return an English juvenile book I lent him a couple of years ago. He said he read it at last. He studied in the States for one year in college and still continue his effort to learn English.
We enjoyed our conversation in English. To me his English sounds better than his Japanese. His Japanese is not fluent... to say the least.
He told me that he was very late in speaking. He had a difficulty in understanding written Japanese. So he could read Japanese books only very slowly. Actually he recently failed written tests to obtain driver's license 3 times because he could not understand the questions well. When he speaks he speaks with somewhat longer intervals than normal between phrases or sometimes between words.
But when he speaks English. It is totally different. He speaks very fluently and fast. I feel that he speaks without translation from Japanese to English. I mean he speaks English by thinking in English. This is a major turning point when you learn English. If you reach this point, you can really enjoy speaking in English.
When he speaks English he looks confident as though he is a different person. It is quite interesting. In his brain there grew a new territory that handles English language system besides its Japanese counterpart. I guess this new part has begun to excel the Japanese part.
Another reason may be his feelings of superiority when he speaks English. He said when he spoke Japanese he felt inferior among Japanese people. But in English he can speak far better than average Japanese people of his age. That gives him immense confidence and it shows up in his way of speaking. He is now on a positive spiral. The more he has confidence, the better he can speak English, which motivate him to study it harder. The better can he speak English, the more confidence does he get
Confidence is a strange thing. Once he has it in English he also does other things with a lot of confidence. He is inspired to try many other things too.
I really hope other young people are like him... Not just young people. All of us may have to follow his example.