I started learning English when I was in nursery, which I believed is applicable to most of Singaporean children. One might think that Singaporeans must be very proficient in English after so many years of education. However, this was not entirely true – or at least not for me. I grew up in a family that mainly conversed in either Mandarin or dialect – Hokkien. This meant that I would need to put in extra effort to learn the language which made learning English less interesting and more tedious. Despite my parents’ efforts to instill interest in me through reading of storybooks and watching television programmes, I was simply not interested. I feel that if I am able to communicate with others through other means (actions / Mandarin) why is there a need for me to learn English?
As I reached secondary school, I was introduced to a subject “Literature”. I enjoyed literature very much but was not able to score well in it. Initially, my literature teacher thought that my understanding in the concepts was lacking and often conduct face-to-face tuition with me. To her surprised, she noticed that I understood the concepts in literature quite well and she was puzzled as to why I was not able to score well. After going through a few sessions, my teacher realised that it was not my understanding that is lacking but my English foundation was weak – I was not able to express my thoughts with only words. The thing about literature was that it used written English to express my thoughts and not through actions. With that in mind, my teacher got me to practice using simple and short sentence to express my thinking. This method worked for me and I was able to bring across my understanding through the use of English.
The take away from my English learning journey was that any subject can be less tedious and a little more interesting once we found the method most suitable to ourselves.
Revised on:
-25 September 2016.
-18 September 2016.
Hi Alcina,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! It is nice to know that your teacher was able to discover and quickly resolve your learning difficulty owing to the language barrier.
I would like to highlight that your usage of tenses should be consistent. For example, in the phrase "Despite my parents' efforts to instill interest in me... I am simply not interested," the correct tense to use would be the past continuous i.e. "... I was simply not interested," as you are recounting a past experience.
Technicalities aside, I do hope the takeaway from your English learning journey will enable you to reach greater heights in your SIT learning journey. Cheers!
-Ike
Hey Ike, thanks for pointing that out! Will pay more attention to it.
DeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteSimilar to what Ike has said, your usage of tenses could be improved. Other than that, I really liked that I was able know what your thoughts were through this sentence:
" I feel that if I am able to communicate with others through other means (actions / mandarin) why is there a need for me to learn English?" It made the post interesting.
Also, glad you got a great take away from your journey.
Hey Fazira, glad that you find it interesting. Thanks!
DeleteThis is a very inspiring reflection, Alcina, as you provide many interesting details in telling your story. There are numerous language errors though, in particular in verb tense inconsistency. Since you tell a story in the past, then you can tell it in the past or by using historical present, but not both.
ReplyDeleteThere are also some problems with your lack of appropriate capitalization (Mandarin, Hokkien).
Let's work on this. :)
Thanks for the effort!
Dear Brad, thanks for the kind feedback and also noted on the errors. Will work on the errors you've pointed out. =)
Delete