Marching to success.

When I was told that we have to introduce our English learning history, I was puzzled because I don’t know how to start with. But when I deeply think of it, I find something interesting in my history of learning English.

Like many of you, I started attending kindergarten at the age of 3. However, believe it or not, I discovered that I first opened the door to English when I was holding in my mother’s arm! My mother sang the alphabet song to me that unveil the secrecy of this mysterious language---English. I started get exposing myself to English when I was taught English songs by my mother. I just think English is a kind of music and I really enjoy it as I can have fun in it. As my family is a traditional Chinese one, there’s a deep-rooted thinking that learning English is the basic requirement of today's society. I was therefore sent to an international kindergarten when I was 3. Alice,who is my first foreigner classmate that I met in the kindergarten. We communicate in English and I seldom teach her Cantonese as well. It’s thankful that she did help me to learn how to express myself in English and my communication skill was improved. However, she went back to Australia when I was 5. Up to now, we are still keeping contact via internet.

My sister also played an important role in my academic history. She is 3 years older than me so when she was still studying in kindergarten, she always shows me what she had learnt from school and taught me when she backed home. She is pretending a mentor or so call "a tutor" in my life. If I found any problems, I will find her immediately without any hesitate. She is now studying in UK so that I can have the chance to hear the culture or news of UK from chatting with her. As she mentioned, to know more about the culture of a language behind can surely help you to make improvement in learning.

It was so fortunate that I can have the chance to study in an EMI secondary school (English as Medium of Instruction School), which almost all subjects besides Chinese are taught in English. I can still remember that it was very harsh as there’re many difficult vocabulary items that I couldn’t understand them. Luckily, I could soon adapted the English learning environment. As my academic result was quite good, my confidence in English started growing up by the praises of teachers and classmates. I was recommended to join the speech festival and finally awarded in 2001, 2003 and 2004 respectively. It’s really glad to have a chance to improve my oral English and participating the competition.

By then, I met an excellent English teacher in Form 6 who inspires me most. One day, I asked my teacher for advice in improving English. She didn’t say anything but write down “TANSTAAFL” on a piece of paper. I didn’t understand at that moment, I wonder why this strange teacher wrote down this set of password or a Morse code to me. I found the meaning out a few days later and soon, this “Morse code” became my Motto as well. Don’t you know the meaning of these letters? TANSTAAFL is an acronym for the adage “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”, popularized by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1966 novel “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”.

I therefore borrowed this book from Library and I found out the main idea of the book, and of course, found out the reason why my teacher wrote this few words to me. It was told that to get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another. It doesn’t mean that we pursuit to improve our English is giving up our mother language. But I soon asked myself, “What motivates you to improve your English standard?” As a well-know writer Mr. Tao Kit said, “ The key to master a language is to fall in love with it.” To filling up the principle of “No sweet without sweat”, I tried my very best to grab every chance to learn English. I participated in the English Club, holding activities such as English Week, editing School newspaper and so on. And I can feel how powerful of “TANSTAAFL” are!

For me, University life is the honeymoon years for students. Lucky do we can study in City University of Hong Kong which provides dozen of chances for students. The short-sight goal for me is to achieve a better result in Year 1 so that I can have the chance to go exchange. It’s longed for me to go UK to go sightseeing of the heritages and treasures display in the British Museum.

As my parents always said, “Ups-a-daisy!” Meeting obstacles is inevitable in learning but we need to overcome all challenges and to hurdle the fences. English is no more pretending as an EXAMINATION SUBJECT but a tool of communication in real life. Maybe we need to think about how to fall in love with it and master it.