My
English Language Learning Journey - ES1102
Before
I share with you about my English Language Learning Journey, I would like to
give you a brief introduction about myself. I was born in Korea, and have lived
there till I was 11 years old. Because of my father’s occupation, my family
moved to Japan and we lived there for about 4 years, and then we came to
Singapore for the same reason mentioned.
English
is one of the most commonly spoken language around the world and is arguably
the most useful language in various major areas such as business, research, or
even in politics.The importance of mastering English has been increasing and
this pressured many of the non-English speaking countries, Asian countries in
particular nowadays, to push their students to English classes, on top of their
normal curriculum. Korea and Japan, of course, were not the exceptions to this
change in education policy.
However, Korea and Japan are yet to be considered
as a multi-nation society like Singapore, and thus this makes the overall
environment less effective to learn the English, which is 2nd language
for them Korean and Japanese. People in Korea and Japan are effectively monolingual and they feel
very awkward to speak with other people in English (or any language that is not
their language). Even in the English
class I attended in Korea and Japan, the predominantly used language is their
own ones, and not English (except for greetings for some teachers). This could
be because students cannot follow the lesson should the language used in class is English, or teachers are not
confident to conduct the lesson in English (I have done the research for
English education in Japan for my project work, so I am quite sure about this.)
So, by the time I came to Singapore (when I
was secondary 2 then), the command of my English was as good as the nursery
kids in Singapore, and this caused me a big trouble to get into the school and
catch up with me peers. Desperate, I started to read the news, articles, and memorised
the new words to first improve my vocabulary. I gradually became used to the complicated
sentence structure often used in news, and some of the comprehension passage used in the
school examination. I was fortunate enough to pass in the entry exam at
St.Gabriel Secondary School, and started my school life in Singapore after a
few months I reached this English-speaking country, Singapore. I read a lot of
good writings (what we call a ‘model essay’) and tried to use the good phrases
and expressions used by the them.
This is just a mere summary of my English
Language Learning Journey. Though there were a lot of tear and sweat in the
process, I can confidently say that I put my best effort to learn English and
am willing to continue to challenge myself to do better.
[edited on 11/09/2014]
[edited on 11/09/2014]
