My English Language Journey
The English Language Journey had been tough for me since I come from a family that communicate in either Chinese or Hokkien(a type of Chinese dialect). I did not had any contact with English until i went to a primary school.
English had always been the subject that I dislike the most as I always fail the test. I could not even form a proper English sentence before primary school. It didn’t help that I communicate with most of my friend in Chinese. I did not take English seriously as I did not understand what my teacher is saying and I did not feel the need of learning English as I felt comfortable speaking in Chinese. I only realised the importance of English when I almost retained in Secondary three as I did poorly for my English. Because of not willing to learn when I was younger, hence I have weak foundation which mean I had been struggling with English throughout my Secondary education.
I started to appreciate English after I went to Singapore Polytechnic, as some of my friend introduce some English comedy and drama to watch. I enjoy them a lot but I was not able to understand some of the joke in the comedy as I am weak in English. This make me more eager to learn English as I started to find that English can be fun too. I started to improve my English by reading newspaper and story book daily. I also when to some addition English classes when I am having a school break. I enjoyed those classes as the teacher was humorous and friendly. He not only teaches me English, he also made me love English and appreciate the beauty in it.
I had improve the proficiency of my English language since my Polytechnic education. I now can communicate fairly well with people in English. But it still had not overtaken Chinese as my main language. Currently I am still better in Chinese than English, even thought I have improved my English by a lot during the past few years. I will continue to improve my English, and hopefully it will be on par with my Chinese by the time I graduated form Singapore Institute of Technology .
Thank you, Calvin, for this highly detailed, reflective post. I really appreciate the way you have openly discussed your discomfort with English, and how your attitude, which was initially quite negative, became more positive over the years.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few language issues with your writing. Most of the problems are in your use of verb tense. Let's review that. :)
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ReplyDeleteDear Calvin,
ReplyDeleteYour post was a great and comprehensive one as it covers your learning process, challenges as well as your progress. However, I noticed a few errors namely “even thought” and “graduated form”. Some of your sentences could also be briefer as it felt somewhat draggy in the second paragraph.
Apart from that, I enjoyed reading your post and I understand how tough your English language learning process was as I come from a Mandarin-speaking family as well. Let us continue to improve ourselves together!