I start learning English when I am in kindergarden.
Despite learning English early, I grew up in a
Chinese-speaking environment where I usually conversed in Chinese to my friends
and family, so English is not my forte. I do not like English since young. Partly it was
also because of the experience I had with English. I
remembered that being weak in English I always had to stay back in school for remedial lessons during my primary school days.
I remember that being weak in English I always had to stay back in school for remedial lessons.
I remember that being weak in English I always had to stay back in school for remedial lessons.
My secondary friends and I even tried to set a rule that we should start
conversing in English instead so that we could help each other to improve our
English before our Olevel. However, after a while we subconsciously switched
back to Chinese again. I failed English in my Olevel exam too. That resulted in me
not being able to enter business courses in Polytechnics. Thus, I ended up in
engineering course in the Green sector which I surprisingly found new interest
in.
Making multi-racial friends and reading more English materials in polytechnic helped me in English too. My group of friends converse in English so that everyone can
understand each other, in order not to let anyone feel left out. It allows me converse in English regularly making my
speech flow better. Furthermore, this group of friends would often help to correct
my English when I used it incorrectly. Seeing myself improve and
being more confident to converse in English as compared to the past is fun. I hope to
further improve my English as it is important for
communications,writing reports and for my future.
~edited 11/9/15
~edited 4/12/15
Thank you for sharing, Yifang, in this highly detailed reflection. In this chronological reflection you clearly present some of the challenges you have faced with using English, and some of the strides you have made since your interest in English increased. I’m glad to see that since studying in he poly you have been willing to take action to improve your use of / interaction in English. Certainly conversing more often with your friends in English is a useful strategy for enhancing your language skills. Another helpful thing would be to develop more awareness of the conventions of writing. This website will be useful for that: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/678/01/
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to know that you truly want to improve. To that end, there are a few sentences that you need to revisit from this post:
1) I first started to learn English when I am … >>> (inconsistent verb tense use)
2) Despite learning English early, English is not my forte as I grew up in a Chinese-speaking environment where I usually converse in Chinese to my friends and family instead. >>>
Despite learning English early, I grew up in a Chinese-speaking environment where I usually converseD in Chinese to my friends and family, so English is not my forte.
3) I do not enjoy learning English since young. >>> ?
(wrong verb tense)
4) Being weak in English, I remembered that I always had to stay back in school for remedial lessons. >>>
I remember that being weak in English I always had to stay back in school for remedial lessons.
5) That resulted me not being … >>> That resulted IN me not being …
6) ...which I surprising found new interest in. >>> which I surprisingly found new interest in.
7) In order not to let anyone feel left out in the group, our group of friend converse in English so that everyone can understand each other is talking about. >>>
(verb tense?)
Let's look at these!
I appreciate your effort!
Hi Yi Fang! I also grew up in a Chinese speaking environment and also usually converse in Chinese to my friends and family. I agree that conversing in English to friends will definitely help you improve in your fluency in English and also correcting one another will help you improve your English. I also converse in English more often in polytechnic with my friends as some of them are from the other races and we help correct one another. Hope that we can all learn and improve our English together!
ReplyDeleteHi Yi fang! I do not like to learn English when i was young too. I still remember that i was always not doing my English homework during my primary school days because i find it tedious and difficult to do so i gave up on it. But now, i'm slowly improving on my English. Glad to know that you are also improving on your English too. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Yi Fang!
ReplyDeleteLike you, I did not like to learn English when I was younger because of the negative experience I had. I remember not doing well in English made me feel discourage and I tend to converse in Chinese instead because I was more comfortable in it. It was a really good idea that you and your peers were helping one another to improve English as I always feel that people learn best with peers' help.
On a side note, I really admire your determination to improve your English despite setbacks.:) It is something I should take back from you as I often give up whenever I have discouraging experience.
Keep it up Yi Fang ! Let us work together to improve our English together!