Cynthia and I as English Leaners

　　From my first time learned English when I was nine years old, thirteen years have passed. On the way of learning English, I meet many setbacks, but I also meet many people who helped me. These experiences were hard, happy and worthy, and they all became my precious memories. For a long time, I always thought that all other student, their process of learning English were about me. After all, the textbooks we used are similar. But I was wrong, totally wrong; the gap of English ability between the students who were good at it and the students who were not good at it was much bigger than I thought. I felt very ashamed about my misunderstanding. Last week teacher played a recording file about a girl called Cynthia sharing her experiences of learning English. This recording file confirmed my thinking more. And I knew that I had a lot of difference with her. For example, my speaking ability was better than her. I will talk about the reasons later. We had some differences with each other, but we also had the same idea and ability, like the future wish. As an English learner, I thought it was a chance to know the other people whose process of English was different with me. Not only it related to my achievement in this subject, but also I want to analysis my process of learning English from many sides totally.

　　First let’s talk about my English learning situation. I started learning English about when I was nine year. Compare with the other learners, I was better in listening. For me, it was not very hard for me to find the key part from people’s talking and figure out what were they talking about. So why my talent in listening is better than my other ability like reading and writing, I think there were two main reasons, the family element and the unconscious training. I regard the family element as one of the reasons is because I am not the only one who is good at listening to the others talking. My dad, my mom, and my younger, they are all good at this, especially my sister is the best in my home. The other reason was unconscious training, because in my home, we always called each other in place instead of walking to the room. Perhaps because this kind of environment, I was used for finding the information in the sentences, otherwise I had to ask my family to say it again. In addition, the Chinese stand-up comedy, which was one of my favorite leisure activities, also trained me unconsciously. Because unlike the movie, they didn’t have subtitles, I had to listen very carefully to enjoy the video. On the other hand, my speaking ability was pretty good, too. In fact, my speaking ability was not so good before until I started on the special speaking lesson with a Dutch lives in Taiwan called Leen at weekend. The lesson stopped for about two year because I need to prepare the high school entrance exam. And then we continued the lesson because of a special chance. When I was at first grade in the high school, one time I was sick and lied on the bed, my mom asked me do I want to leave of absence for one year to concentrate on strong my health and I agreed, so I had time to continue the lesson with Leen again. In fact, the speaking lesson was not like the usual class. We didn’t use the textbooks; we were just talking what I was interested like TV programs, movies or video games once a week as two friends in the chat. This form of communication really helped me a lot because it didn’t have the exam, I could chat with Leen with a very relax mood and I didn’t need to focus on correct grammar, only needed to say what I wanted to perform advisably. Also, I have studied abroad in Australia for seventeen days during winter vacation when I was sixteen years old. I had many chances to talk with foreigners in that time like ordering the food. But my reading and writing ability need to improve more, the main reason was that the number of vocabulary I remember was not enough. About my future ambition, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. Not only because more than one person had said that my personality suit to be a teacher but also I didn’t exclude this job and I liked children.

　　In the same way, according to Cynthia’s answering, she thought she was good at speaking, although I didn’t think so after I listened to the file. In addition, she said she was not good at reading, just like me. But her reason was that she didn’t have the enough patience to read the all articles. I speculated that she might skip and ignore many important points in the articles when she was reading. Off course, it was just my guess. Unlike me, she also knew she was not good at listening. When she was asked how to solve the problem, she thought she could be better by talking with her “boring” teacher. I agree her idea. About her future ambition, just like me, she also wanted to be a teacher to teach young children because she thought they were cute, but she wanted to be a cram school teacher, not an elementary school teacher. That was different with me.

　　After comparing with her and me, I found that she really had lots of differences with me, like she was not good at listening and I was good at it. Although some details were different, we were very alike in such many places, both we were not good at reading, both we wanted to be a teacher. Like what I said, the details were different, she was not good at reading because the lack of patience and my reason was the lack of vocabulary. Anyway, both we had something not enough in English learning, so we needed to study hard to achieve our targets