Content

I was listening to news about Mosul two days ago when I remembered a conversation I had with a student and what she said: “I wonder why people start war.” About two weeks ago, I had a conversation with another student about world war 2. We spent around 15 minutes standing outside the cram school at night discussing the roles of Japan and America in the war, and about books related to the war.

During such times, when I’m talking about important things with my students, especially with the younger ones, I’m always impressed with their ideas, the effort they make to look at a topic from different angles and how they can keep an open-mind.

One student said his teacher in school said that being able to speak English won’t be very important in the future because of technology so they should focus on content. Although I don’t agree that people don’t have to learn English, I agree that what someone says is more important than how perfectly or grammatically-correct someone says it, especially in a conversation.