My mother used to enroll me in many classes when I was
younger, including a English phonics class. However, despite being in an English
phonics class, I was never really good at English.
I came from a Chinese speaking family and was hardly given
any opportunities to practice speaking English. On top of that, I went to a Chinese
school and from primary one through four, my friends were all Chinese speaking.
Hence, it was natural for me to be better at Chinese than English.
The realization of the importance of English only came to me
when I got to primary five. I was posted to a better class and suddenly,
everyone was English speaking. I had no choice but to start getting used to speaking
English. My new friends influenced me and I started reading English storybooks
and listening to English music. Eventually, the language grew on me and I
enjoyed it even more than I enjoyed Chinese books and music.
My English began to show an improvement, and this could be
seen especially through my results in school. I was commended by my secondary
school English teacher on my well-written composition, and this was something that usually
only happened in Chinese classes. My confidence increased and I started to love
English more and more.
It was a huge disappointment to find out that I had to take
an extra English module in university because I thought I had written well for the
test. Thus, I went for the first lesson reluctantly, but was pleasantly surprised to walk out at the end of it feeling the
opposite. Brad gave us a different perspective on the class. I agreed that I might
as well make the best of it and learn more about the language that is so
important in our world today, and strengthen my foundation in English because I
know that it is not strong enough. Now, I am looking forward to learning things that I never knew
about the English language that I’m sure would benefit me a lot!
Edited: 3rd February 2014
