This week is an important week. Many students who did the Eiken examination will know if they passed or if they failed. I hope that if you did the Eiken test you passed it. If you passed the test I hope you will prepare very hard for the interview test that comes next month. But, if you did not pass the Eiken test I hope you will not worry. Many, many, many people do not pass every Eiken test. The most important thing is that you will try again. You must not quit. You must not give up. You need to not worry about your pride. You need to check the parts of the test you do not know well, and you must study more. You can do it. You need time. You need effort.

Doing the Eiken tests is very important. You will learn a lot of English, and you will master your second language. English is very important for many companies and careers here in Japan. If you can speak English well, and if you can read and write English well there are many kinds of jobs that you can do in the future.

If you read and write English well you could work as a translator. It is true that technology can do a lot of translating, but if you know English well, and know the style and feeling of language you can do a lot of work in helping people communicate clearly from different countries.

If you hope to have a safe and stable job, becoming a government worker is a good idea for bilingual people. Many places in local government, prefectural government, and national government need people who can speak English and help people who come to Japan from other countries.

If you want to travel and see the world you might want to become a flight attendant or pilot. These jobs can show you the whole world, and if you can speak English well with customers and coworkers, you can have a very exciting adventure. You can go to Europe and North America, South America, Africa, and Australia and use your language skills.

Banking, especially international banks, need bilingual staff. If you speak English you can work with banks to help people use and save their money in good way.

Japanese people who speak English well can find a job as a police officer. Many police must talk to people from other countries, and sometimes there is trouble. If you can speak and communicate in English well, many police stations would like to have you come and work with them. You can have a great job keeping your society safe, and also use your special language skills to be important to your team of fellow police officers.

The final place where being bilingual is helpful is teaching. You have wonderful examples of great English teachers here at Otemae. If you like to teach, and if you want to help students learn English, you will need to do very well on your Eiken examinations. It is a long and hard road to be bilingual, but becoming a teacher is a great and important job.

So, you can see that learning English is not just about getting a good result for a test. Learning English is not only about getting a good Eiken score. Learning English is something that can help you in many, many careers in the future. I hope you will study hard and master English so that you can do a great job in your career in the future and help many people too.