You want to hear the truth or not ?

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Frankly, English has long been a frustrating subject for me, and I never feel that learning such a subject is an interesting stuff, ever since my early childhood. At each stage of learning, I do endeavor to make it more interesting, but sadly, I cannot.

Probably you may be wondering why I still chose English as my major? I am talking about this later. But now, let me share some of my history of learning English since my childhood.




All started from ABC

Actually, my approaches to learning English in kindergarten were quite similar to others, i.e. started from ABC, and then learned some basic vocabularies. At that moment, I did not think English was a difficult subject. The most challenging task for me was just writing copybook. As I could not write neatly, my grade of copybook was always between D and C. How frustrating it was to a cute boy then!



Laziness in the primary school

When I became a pupil, it was still easy to learn English. I started it from learning present tense, then past tense, present continuous tense and so on. I remember the hardest time then was to memorize a long list of irregular verbs. Though it was difficult, once I overcame it, I could always get full mark in exercises related to tenses. However, I was rather lazy during the primary school time. Many say primary stage is the best time to widen one’s vocabularies. When others were reading English story books during the free time, I was just madding about TV games and comics. I think this must be the most regrettable thing I have done during my history of learning English.




Cram for exams?

This situation was not improved even in my secondary school time. Since anyone who just passed all the subjects could promote to a higher grade, I suddenly lost the motivation to learn better English. I almost did nothing about English from Form 1 to Form3, so my knowledge just remained at primary level. When I promoted to Form 4, a big challenge was facing me – it was the C.E. exam. When I first did a past paper, I failed in it. But the worst thing to me is I found my mark was so far from getting a pass! I was so puzzled what to do next as I just had about a year left to take the examination. Then I tried to attend some tutorial classes, hoping that the tutors could help me pass the English examination. I did learn many skills from there, especially for tackling the examination paper. But frankly, I did not like this style of learning. I hated cramming for examination very much. It seemed that learning English is just a means to passing exams. I thought it was meaningless to do so, even though I could get a pass at the end. All these made me feel that learning English was so boring. However, I could do nothing about this, because it has really become a trend in Hong Kong. Being a student here, we seldom have time to experience the fun of learning English, don’t you agree?


Learning 'Real English'

Despite the fact of that, I was willing to sacrifice a little of my academic result, in order to learn ‘Real English’. So, when I promoted to Form 6, I changed my methods of learning English. I was no longer interested in learning skills tackling exam papers. On the contrary, I spent lots of time reading English materials like Time and SCMP. Whenever I saw some useful vocabularies or well-written sentences, I jotted them down and tried to use them when writing blog. Since the contents of the blog were all about my daily life, I did feel it was meaningful to record them with English. Besides, I started to mad about American soap operas. My favorite soap opera was Prison Break. As the story of Prison Break was very exciting, I did not mind listening to English when watching it. And by the way, I learned quite a lot of slangs from soap operas. Foreigners use slangs in daily life, so, don’t you think learning slangs should also be a part of English? But sadly, the conservative education system in Hong Kong never allows student to do so. What a pity!



Trip to Canada

During the summer holidays in Form 6, I told my mother that I would like to spend the money on travelling to a country whose mother tongue was English, rather than attending tutorial classes to improve my English. Finally, I chose Canada and stayed there for a month. I was so glad because I had longed for being in an environment that overwhelmed by English for many years. During those days, I liked going out, communicating with the locals with English. And I like foreign kids very much as they are so cute and energetic. Sometimes I did admire that they could be raised in such a good environment and could speak such fluent English. And on the contrary, I wondered what I had actually learned for the past 18 years.




'Exceptions more than rules!'

Besides, on one occasion I met a couple, John and Sarah, who had been English teachers there for over 15 years. I asked them about what made English so difficult to learn. Their answer was: Its exceptions are more than rules. What a sentence to conclude this subject! When I was in primary 2, my teacher told me if we used past tense, a verb should be followed by d/ed/ied. But in primary 5, my teacher told me another thing. She said there were still great deals of irregular verbs that cannot change in this way. So what puzzled me then was, if exceptions are more than rules, then what are the original functions of rules? When I have put a big effort to learn those rules, but you just heartlessly put a cross and with a reminder beside my answer --‘This is an exception.’ At this moment, I do feel frustrated. Additionally, being raised in an environment not providing so many chances for students to use English, like Hong Kong, I do feel it is hard to learn English well.






But now......

In spite of the difficulties faced, when I came back to Hong Kong, I tried my best to do what I could. I kept reading English magazines and writing blog with English. Finally, I passed the U.E. exam with grade D, and now my major in university is also English. As I mentioned before, English did frustrate me a lot at different stages. Now that I have the qualifications to enroll in university, and I also have a chance to get rid of it. But why I am still here writing an essay, sharing about my learning history?


It is just because…..


I want to overcome it;
I feel there is still room for improvement and;
I believe I can do it one day.


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