first entry

 

First Entry/ Language Learning, English

 

When it comes to learning second language, people in Taiwan will definitely say English, and so will I. I have started to learn English since I study in elementary school. When I studied in elementary school, my mom forced me to take a course in cram school. It is believed that a majority of Asian parents will do this as well. At first, I was resistant because I wanted to have fun after school instead of spending extra time learning a language that is quite different from Chinese. However, the thought was changed at the moment when I start to study in the cram school.

Teachers there were nicer than I reckoned. They taught English via games. Moreover, as you won the game or got good grades, which caused my attitude of desiring to win and now I think this may be the side effect of this teaching method but it is still great, you could get the points. Once you got enough points, you could take advantage of these to earn a prize. In this way, I began to be fond of learning English; hence, I built a good foundation of English. I think this is the most important core when somebody starts to learn a new language. That is, to let someone like a language and thus he or she will not feel tedious when learning it. Because of the steady foundation, the English classes of my elementary school was badly smooth. I perceived learning English as fun until I got into junior high school.

In junior high school, students are required to memorize much vocabulary and grammar, which changed my thought of learning English. I started to feel bored at English since I was tired of memorizing vocabulary and grammar, which are tedious but crucial also, notwithstanding the heavy pressure of studying. Every subject was a lot harder than that of elementary school, English in particular. As English has no boundary, the only thing you could do was just keep memorizing and reading or you would fail in exam. The situation lasted to my high school time. Even though learning English was tedious, I still would not hate to learn it because I knew that learning English was useful and beneficial to my future.

With this thought, I decided to major in department of English and I really did it. However, at the beginning of my college life was painful as students were required to speak English in class, which is the thing that I was not familiar. So, I was not accustomed to it at first. And I started to realize that I was not the top because there were lots of excellent classmates who are equipped with great ability of speaking. I do admire them a lot. Although I am not the best in class, I still train myself to study their experiences and I realized the core is braveness. As you have braveness, you can easily communicate with others and do not be afraid of making mistakes since languages are used to communicate rather than being correct. I firmly believe that I can progress a lot in this department. And I ultimately find the initial love of learning English.