英語検定ライティング準１級（第160回）

発音「それを言われたら喋れない話」

先日のこと、ある女子大生と会話をする機会があった。地元の国立大学で自分が卒業したところだった。学部は違うがライティングに関していろいろと話ができそうなので嬉しかった。
There happened to be an opportunity to talk with a female university student the other day.
Her university is the national one in our neighborhood and I graduated from there about four decades ago.
Our faculty isn’t the same, but I felt delighted that we could have a common topic about English composition.

彼女の発音が良いので怖気づいてしまった。自分は昔から発音の悪さに劣等感を持っていた。そもそも周囲には日本人英語が理解できるアメリカ人が多いので伝わればいいと思っている。
When she spoke English, her pronunciation was so fluent that I became ashamed because I am not usually careful about my pronunciation.
When people living in Japan speak English, we should emphasize what we want to say, so we don’t have to feel inferior about our poor pronunciation.
In the first place, Americans or Australians around us are able to understand what Japanese say in English even though our pronunciation isn’t satisfactory.

驚いたのは高校２年生の時に英検準１級を取得しているということだ。国立大学によっては英語の試験を満点に換算するところもある。英語が得意だと恩恵がある典型的な話ではある。
To my surprise, she passed  Eiken Grade Pre-1 when she was a high school student, which helped her receive a reception letter from her desired university because she didn’t have to take an English test.
Several university have special conditions that an examinee with Eiken Grade Pre-1 could be offered a full mark about English exams.
This is a typical story that a Japanese student with confidence about English ability could pass the college.

彼女は市内の予備校でバイトをしているとのこと。英検の資格がものを言って採用は一発合格だった。準１級は受験の世界では役に立つ。高校生にはなかなか合格ができないからだね。　
She is now an English teacher as a part timer at a prep school in the center of the city, which a certification of Pre-1 provided her with when she applied to the job.
This certification of Pre-1 serves an examinee who wants to enroll a desired university because only a few high school students could capture it.

大学受験については英語の勉強をする必要がなかったらしい。それで今は英語の能力は落ちているとのこと。英語をしなかった分だけ、他の科目に全力を注げることができたのだろう。
After all, she didn’t have to study English during her entrance exams’s season, she said, which makes her ability of English a little inferior.
We can safely guess that she studied required subjects except English hard, in short, she poured her energy into math, science and so on.