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.
