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may's English learning history
I am May. Like Peter, Tom and Mary, I spent my childhood in a grass-root family. My parents don’t receive much education. Undoubtedly, they don’t know much about English except for alphabet. They cannot do much to help my study.
Fortunately, they do really love me and always give me the best. They didn’t send me to a prestige primary school but a local famous tutorial class after school. At that time, I was only six. In the class, tutors pushed me to have many dictations. I am not exaggerating. Those tutors held dictation at least once a day. It was a harsh time for a little girl, wasn’t it?
I, an innocent girl, needed to keep memorizing words day and night, and day after day. I began to hate English. It was a monster. 
Actually, my academic results were not bad throughout the six years in primary school. However, I kept on getting fail or a poor score in English compared with other subjects. It seemed that there was a shadow over my head when I encountered English. I hated English more and more. No improvement was then made. It was a vicious cycle.
Thank God I went to an EMI secondary school afterward. Although the English learning atmosphere was not very rich, I had more chance to learn and use English. My English did get better and better. Nevertheless, there was still much room for me to improve. I still kept on failing, particularly in dictation! This fate made me depressed. After few months, I had been turned off by little or even no improvement. I lost my motivation and passion. Eventually, my English was expected to get worse and worse.
An evil chance seldom comes alone. I remember that it happened when I was in Form three. One day, my English teacher,
Miss Law, asked me to find her after school. It was a rainy day. The sky was dark. Miss Law’s face was dark (as she stranded against the light). My day was dark. She said ‘May, as you know, you are poor in dictation. You always make some minor spelling mistakes. Sometimes, you may even not know how to spell “toilet”. It is a problem.’
‘I know.’ I kept on nodding and didn’t know what I could say.
Miss Law continued ‘I have already talked with Mrs. Chan (my Form two English teacher) and Miss Ching (my Form one English teacher). Both of us want to help you. Maybe we should discuss with your parents first.’
I was really afraid. I was taken to a room and had some tests. After that, they told me that I might likely suffer from Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing or Dyslexia when learning English. I felt hopeless and didn’t want to have a further assessment. I didn’t want to learn English anymore. This was my worst experience.
Luckily, every cloud has a silver lining. In 2006, I met two men who changed my fate. One was P. Chan. As I still needed to face the AL exam, I attended his lessons in order to be more familiar with the exam. He was an amazing tutor with high fervor. Even though I needed to do many exercises and take many notes during the lesson, I still felt enjoyable. I was fulfilled every time when I finished the lesson. I could learn a lot of things from him in an interesting way. He also gave students confidence. He would write down comments on every student’s works. I started to believe in myself. Every Saturday, I would hand in one writing assignment. My English was then getting better and better. Another person is Leung. He is now studying translation in Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is one of my best friends.
Once I have troubles, he will be with me and give me much advice. He is good at learning languages. He tells me that the purpose of learning a language is communication. Simple English is good English. He encourages me to use words only I know how to use them. Using complicated sentence structures or big words doesn’t mean good because people may not be able to catch hold of the meaning. Eventually, they are just meaningless symbols. Although I always forget the spellings, I can still use simple words to express the same idea. That is what I can do. This method really makes me feel more comfortable. I begin to love English because of these two guys! To be honest, this program is not my first choice. I have never thought that I will study English as my major. As my foundation is not good, I don’t expect myself to have a very high GPA. Yet, I still make myself a promise. My GPA must get better and better during these three years. I will try my best! Reading newspaper, talking more with exchange students, watching BBC and learning from my fellow schoolmates will help me achieve my goal more effectively. Practice makes perfect! I do believe it. Let’s endeavor together, my friends!
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veryhea |
Latest page update: made by veryhea
, Sep 25 2008, 1:27 PM EDT
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