Waking up to voices rambling or shouting in Mandarin or Hokkien is how I have lived for the past 20 years. My parents were not educated during their childhood years. Thus, they only know limited amount of English. Therefore, the habit of using Mandarin or Hokkien to communicate with people has already been ingrained in me since young. Even with my friends, proper English is rarely heard in our conversations. We frequently lapse into our habit of conversing in a mixture of different languages, or what we Singaporeans know fondly as Singlish. As a result, I did not practice speaking or writing proper English, unless I am forced to.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, in school, English lessons for Singaporeans are unavoidable. I remembered dreading each English lesson during my primary and secondary school years. Faced with endless grammar exercises, complicated comprehension passages, and horrifying essays questions, it was a torture for me every lesson. Gradually, I grew to dislike learning English. Though I do realize that I have to change that negative mindset, if not my English command will never improve. However to be honest, I was relieved when I knew that English was not part of my Polytechnic curriculum.
Unfortunately, to enter NUS, I realized that I had to take an English placement test. After three years of not writing academic essays, the horrifying reality finally crashed into me when I stared at the test paper. It was frustrating when I was not able to string my thoughts and ideas together fluently in the essay. Thus, it was not surprising when I knew I had to take this module.
Thus, in the lessons of ES1102, I will try to change my negative mindset regarding learning English. Hopefully, I am able to get rid of my fear of English at the end of this upcoming journey (which I am sure will not only be filled with hardships, but laughter and joy as well) with my teachers and my peers.
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-- edited on 6 September 2014 --
Wednesday 27 August 2014
My English Language Learning Journey [Final]
Posted by Xuan at 06:05
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Thanks for the fine rewrite in this new post, Xuan. (Of course, you can also just edit any doc "in-text" and re-save.)
ReplyDeleteHere are a couple more language items to take note of:
1) Waking up to voices rambling or shouting in Mandarin or Hokkien, is.... (no comma needed between the subject and predicate/main verb)
2) Though, I do realize that I have to change that negative mindset if not my English command will never improve.
(The word **though** is not a transition word, so it should not be followed by a comma. Also, your sentence actually includes two **independent clauses**. The result is that this is a **run on**, or two sentences jammed together.)
Thank you for your comment! I will look through and edit the post.
Delete-- Xuan --
English Grammar Sentences Checker is actually a 'personal' English writing and edit english assistant. People who use computers at home or in the office quickly find out that writing consumes much of their activity.
ReplyDelete