{"id":43100,"date":"2026-06-19T11:04:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T02:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/?p=43100"},"modified":"2026-06-19T16:01:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:01:04","slug":"icc-supporter-report-making-new-friends-through-english-chat-club-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/news-en\/2026\/06\/19\/43100\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning English on a Cool Friday Night ECC Supporter Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Anastasiia
\nGSICCS<\/a><\/h6>\n

\u00a0I happened to\u00a0sign up\u00a0for\u00a0facilitating\u00a0at the English Chat Club event without thinking too much of it. It was my first semester at\u00a0GSICCS\u00a0and I was\u00a0looking\u00a0for an opportunity to meet new people\u00a0to reduce \u201cnew-step-in-my-life anxiety\u201d.\u00a0Spoiler alert, I did find new connections and explored the university culture. Although, becoming a facilitator was\u00a0spurt of a moment thing, I am grateful\u00a0that I was able to take part in this event.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0As a non-native English speaker myself, I know how hard it is to\u00a0actually start\u00a0speaking a foreign language, regardless for how long you have been learning it. Only by escaping my comfort zone and immersing myself into English-speaking environment\u00a0I managed to start communicating in English and\u00a0after that I wanted to make this process smoother for other people\u00a0as well, and as a result,\u00a0I signed for this event.\u00a0Indeed, English Chat Club\u00a0created such an\u00a0environment where\u00a0everyone\u00a0could communicate in English without anxiety or pressure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the merits\u00a0of this event\u00a0would be the fact that the\u00a0participants\u00a0were\u00a0divided into several groups led by one or two facilitators. One session included\u00a0two activities:\u00a0ice-breaker\u00a0and the main activity which\u00a0was\u00a0usually a game. Though the event\u00a0flow\u00a0was\u00a0simple, small groups guaranteed that each participant\u00a0could actively\u00a0participate\u00a0in the\u00a0conversation. If someone got\u00a0stuck, facilitators like me would provide advice or feedback to keep the conversation going. In my experience, although I was the facilitator,\u00a0the fellow members\u00a0gave answers or advice faster than I could do that, and you could really feel that everyone was super willing to help each other.\u00a0Plus, if I were to compare it to other Language Exchange Events where the main activity was usually \u201cfree talk\u201d where you discussed\u00a0each other\u2019s experience and opinions, English Chat Club provided us with games and\u00a0materials prepared in advance, so you would not worry about having nothing to talk about or\u00a0having\u00a0less fun than you had expected\u00a0because of unexpected pauses or silence.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Another merit of the event, as I described earlier, was the opportunity to make\u00a0connections.\u00a0There were lots of people\u00a0from different countries, academic background,\u00a0who had\u00a0different\u00a0English\u00a0level.\u00a0I learned a lot from\u00a0this exchange and despite the diversity everyone\u00a0seemed to be\u00a0able to talk\u00a0with each other without any issues or constraints.\u00a0If you were struggling there was always someone to help you. Even when I struggled to explain game rules, I got help from a native speaker from my group (if you are reading this, thank you a lot btw).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0To sum up, whether you just want to chat, meet new people, increase your English level or help other people do it, be sure that you are very welcomed and\u00a0regardless of your goal you are very likely to have a good time\u00a0in a warm community.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

photo by ICC<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anastasiia GSICCS \u00a0I happened to\u00a0sign up\u00a0for\u00a0facilitating\u00a0at the English Chat Club event without thinking t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,97],"tags":[116,115,132],"class_list":["post-43100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","category-other-en","tag-event-report-en","tag-supporter-report-en","tag-talk-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43111,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43100\/revisions\/43111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}