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 have never really 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.
<329 words>
Thank you, Xuan, for this honest, self critical reflection. I enjoyed learning about your distaste for English, especially as your prose flows smoothly and you present vivid imagery of your situation (I can even hear the shouting in Hokkien!).
ReplyDeleteYour enthusiasm for embracing the new reality is clear in this essay as well. let's start by looking at a few problem sentences:
1) My parents were not educated during their childhood years, thus they only know limited amount of English. (comma splice/run on sentence)
2) have never really practice (wrong form)
3) 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. (comma splice/verb tense)
I look forward to working with you this term.
Thank you for your comment and pointing out my mistakes! Not sure if I did it correctly, but I have corrected them.
Delete1) My parents were not educated during their childhood years. Thus, they only know limited amount of English.
2) never practice
3) 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.
I am looking forward in learning lots of new things from you in this term too! =D
Hi Xuan!
ReplyDeleteI was from polytechnic too! QET was also a horror for me as we did not really touched on argumentative essays in polytechnic.
Your reflection has a really good flow to it and I find it very interesting to read. You illustrated your personal experiences effectively too. I also thought that you had a good conclusion as you clearly showed your hopes for ES1102.
Thank you for sharing with us your reflection! Let us all work together to improve our English and hopefully be better writers. See you in class!
Diyanah
Thank you for your comment! Yep! Let's work hard together! :3
DeleteHey Xuan! I agree with you that most of the students get to learn English only in classroom unless they come from English background family! However I think we are lucky to get the chance to take this module as I can see how important English is to communicate with others both in oral and writing methods! Let's fall in love with English together! I believe that we can do it!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment! I also think that taking ES1102 is a blessing as I have learnt a lot of useful knowledge from the classes.
DeleteLet's work hard together!
-- Xuan --
hi xuan!
ReplyDeleteI really like the way you started off with those descriptions because I could almost picture that, and even though i don't wake up to "voices rambling or shouting in Hokkien", Chinese was a first language since my parents are both more comfortable with Chinese, so I do wake up to rambling in Chinese too. The drilling and repetitive exercises in grammar and sentence structures make learning a language really dry to be honest, so I relate to how it might result in a negative mindset formed in the learning process. It was a really smooth reflection where you set a goal and a new positive attitude for yourself at the end of it, determined to change things through this class and all (something that I have to learn to do too). Let's work hard in this and improve together! ^^
Thank you for your comment! I do hope that I am able to maintain that positive attitude though. ^^ Let's strive together to improve our English in this journey!
Delete