It has been about a year and a half since my daughter joined a script class. At first, she was in Tricia's class and the assignment was Matilda! She was excited to join the class, but found it hard to understand Tricia's English. The other three students (Satomi, Yuzuha, and Sue) were fluent in English, so she was freaking out about having to keeping up in such a high level.
She was struggling to read the script and had to look up the meanings of the words before each lesson. We were beginning to wonder whether she should continue, but we heard that Johna's class, which has a lot of elementary students, was starting, so my daughter moved to that class.
My daughter's English was on the less proficient level in the class, but Johna was so kind and corrected her pronunciation in a detailed and easy-to-understand way every time (she has taken online English lessons with a Filipino teacher, but rarely got detailed feedback on pronunciation...) It was amazing to receive feedback from a native English speaker in every lesson. It came as a surprise, and my daughter learned a lot.
For a while it was still a lot of effort to read and to pay attention to pronunciation, but after practicing as much as possible, she got used to the lesson. Instead of being glued to the script, she began to look up to the teacher and other students. Johna also began giving advice on facial expressions and acting, and the lessons became more and more interesting and fun.
She looks forward to the assignments every month, and when it's assigned she tries to find and watch as many videos of the musical as possible. She reads the script and tries to understand the story and the emotions of the characters in the first two lessons each month. She then takes the singing class as a third lesson, so she's ready to put more emphasis on expressing emotions.
We live in a rural area and don't have many opportunities to use English, and I tend to have a narrow view of the world. It's really valuable to be able to learn directly from Broadway teachers using real musical scripts.
I was surprised recently that my daughter was able to express herself with more emotion when she read musical scripts in English rather than in Japanse! I think it's all thanks to the loving teachers Johna and Tricia.
My daughter couldn't understand Tricia's English at first but when she joined the spring camp and Tricia's online spring class again after a long time, she was able to understand a lot more than before. Now, she's able to participate in lessons confidently.
We'd love to continue the script class. My daughter is working hard on improving her English so that one day she can go abroad to challenge herself. ✨️☺️