English Learning History

English Learning History

The first time for me to learn English was in my primary school, and I was 10 years old. Until now, I have been studying English for 10 years. Even it looks like a very long time; the majority of Chinese students did not gain an effective output. Frankly, English became important to me, when it was a part of my high school entrance exam. Hence, the main purpose for us to learn English is to how to pass the exam in a excellent grade and go to a famous high school. Plenty of exercise emphasized on listening and reading, which is the most important parts of our exam. The situation did not change a little, when we went into high school.

Due to the extreme pressure from our college entrance exam, most of high school students spent the whole day on study. For English study, our efforts were concentrated on how to improve our reading speed and how to get the correct answers. Furthermore, exercise was considered as the most effective way to improve English for the most students. Therefore, I have spent a great amount of time on doing exercise, during my high school time. Besides daily comprehension and listening exercise, reciting the article in our text book is another daily routine as well. During the miserable three years in high school, I accumulated useful sentence structures and advanced vocabulary. Even though the whole process was unpleasant, the outcome was pretty remarkable for me. In my college entrance exam, my English grade reached the top 10 in my school, which had 550 students in the exam at that time.

It was not until my first year in my Chinese university did I realize that how important the oral English was. Obviously, the way of teaching in university is totally different from high school. We have lot foreigner teachers, which created a fantastic environment for us to practice our English in real life. Every Tuesday was our regular English corner saloon; at here everybody was allowed to speak English only and I also made friends with my teachers. Since then, I have found another motivation to learn English, broadening my horizon and socializing. Once I got rid of the pressure from difficult and boring exams, learning English became fun and much more interesting. Enjoying a movie, sharing a book with a friend and having a chat about the latest the Grammy Award are also a way to learn English. Just as my teacher said, “When you can use it, it is time for you to enjoy it.”

Interested with the culture behind this language, I started to read some classic novels, such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Sense and Sensibility. Culture and history, I think, could help you to get a better understanding about this language and make this language more charming than it used to be, because you made it alive in your life.

However, there is still a serious problem remained---writing. Actually, I did not spend too much effort on my writing skill before I took the IELTS tests. Due to lack of exercise and the awareness of formal writing, my writing grade is much lower than the others. In order to improve my writing skill, I have asked a lot of teachers and friends for advice. It seems that I have to go back to where I start, practice. Absolutely, the whole process is going to be pretty demanding, but as a university student, academic writing is the foundation of all the study. Right now, I just made a plan to improve my writing, which includes reciting the New Concept English 3，finishing the exercise on Academic Writing and weekly diary. I am looking forward to my performance in the next month.