The introduction of learning English

Learning English is one of the most difficult yet most rewarding experiences of my life. Although at times English learning will be frustrating, it is well worth the effort.

The period of tragedy

My experience of learning English started in the primary school. When I was a primary school student, English learning always made me nervous. I always confused about why I should learning English and really English learning was useful and necessary? On one hand we all know that because English is not wide spread in china at that time, English learning in the primary school in china always based on grammar tests. It caused most of the English learners to think that English was grammar knowledge but not the communication tool or the personal communication capability.

On the other hand my crisis was ongoing while grammar tests were becoming the standard to judge the students English skills, because I was really not good at learning English grammar. This was the main reason which made me stressed about learning English. As my teacher, classmates and I all thought the only way to learn English was passing the grammar examination. This is one of the biggest tragedies I have ever had, in our point of view English grammar was equal to English skills.

Always receiving low grade of the texts, later I gradually felt like giving up and losing my desire of learning English.

                             The period of change

The state lasted, till the summer of Grade 7, when I made a most challenging decision of my life. I dropped the class and studied at home, which I called “Carriden” university, In Chinese I called it “JIA LI DUN”. My mother considered my hobbies, asked my advice and found many good teachers for me using her unique education resource. In addition English is also becoming one of the required courses for me.

At the very beginning I still felt intimidated of learning English, as in my opinion English equals to grammar. But my new English teacher Susan expressed her idea to me and let me know, that we will try to learn English through communication. Her expression made me suddenly open my eyes. Since then I started learning English by using the new learning method.

The new way of learning English

My new way of learning English is to speak it out. Why I would always making mistakes in the grammar examination, because I never use English in my daily life to communicate with the people around me, I can’t understand the grammar from using it. So I must learn English by listening to the radio tapes of the textbooks. I realize the way of how to build the sentences by using the beautiful vocabulary and correct grammar personally without using Chinglish. Secondly I have to imitate the reader’s voice in the tape by repeating the sentence frequently, in order to improve my pronunciation and make up my sense of language better than before.

When I do so, I felt my English capability improved a lot during a short term. Yet the situation was far from perfect, throughout my effort of learning English I got such a progress of my English learning, I felt I could make up lots of my own sentences, I was good at trying to reform the difficult sentences in to my way of speaking and spoke sentences by using English fluently. I suddenly found I could understand everything I came across.

In fact, all of my achievements are all related to the effort of my English teacher. I am really grateful to her as she would often praise me, whenever I got any progress. Commendation and encouragement are the most positive and important elements that always go alone with me and transform me into optimistic and confident person. These later become the major power to cheer me up and help me solving any troubles on the way of learning English. Now I seldom receive praise from her, as I have grown up. Yet I have been already researched out my own method to encourage myself, in order to keep my eagerness, interest and commitment in the active state of learning English.

                The new problem I meet in the way of English learning

I was refreshed by my new way of learning English, what a magical approach! I was gradually crazy about using my quick memory to remember more vocabulary, because on one hand my advancement motivated me to learn more words to serve my English speaking vocabulary tank. On the other hand because I felt interested in English speaking and it helped me indentify what I need in my vocabulary and encouraged me to describe the things by using more accurate words. Because of the desire to increase my vocabulary, i suddenly raise more concerns on vocabulary gaining than in grammar learning. During this period I feel grammar is less important than vocabulary increasing, although I can understand some grammar while building the sentence.

Later as my vocabulary have inflated a lot, but likewise my grammar problems also appeared a lot. As I was not really care about grammar using, I can not understand the true meanings of some sentence appeared in the text book and made a large amount of mistakes while building my own expressions at times. Such as grammar problems and understanding errors, luckily I was aware of the problems at once, so I pay a lot of attention to the grammar.

How to solve the problems

Later I find as the English learning has becoming more and more difficult. My poor logical ability or awareness often hinders my understanding ability, when I was reading. Sometimes I would be stuck with my understanding barriers, so I followed my teacher’s advice to take part into the class of “Modern Chinese”, “Collage Chinese” and “Foreign literature” to help me know the history of foreign countries and deal with the understanding barriers at the same time.

These courses are really worth to me, among the subtle my reading barriers have decreased and now I realize what the grammar is and why we should learn it! Now I finally understand the significance of English grammar by learning it systematically.

We can’t learn English just in favor of speaking without take grammar in to consideration. The authentic English consists of these two things, both of them are important; we can not ignore either of them. Maybe the English learner will put their effort into the English speaking at the beginning, yet it is necessary to learn the English grammar later. When the people understand the grammar of English, I believe it will be the most valuable wealth for them.

Yet I know it is still not enough, as the English learning is becoming more and more difficult. I have to learn the accurate understandings by looking up the English explanation of each word from the advanced learner’s English-Chinese dictionary and English website of WIKIPEDIA, the advanced software published by Google. These will help me reap more benefits on English learning.

                              Final paragraph

Learning English is the process for the person to complete their comprehensive capacity. Through the English learning I was taught a lot, such as commitment, discipline, growing me own, not waste time and never putting any assignments on hold. I will adhere to these essential and useful habitats and work hard at English forever. I believe these benefits will keep along with me and last a lifetime.

                                    Published by: Kevin CAI       2011