Huang Xu
ESL 33B
2/3/2015
My Experience of English Learning As leaning English for almost fifteen years, I have to say I had a lot of experience of learning this language. Yes, I studied English for fifteens, it’s been a long time, but I still can’t speak English fluently. Honestly I don’t think my English is close to “fluently”, I think my English still can describe as “broken” or “fractured”, just like Amy Tan’s mother. The good news is I can feel my improvement, and maybe in years, my English would no longer be “broken”. Any way, as learning English for fifteen years, I always have some interesting things to share. There’s too much to talk about, like my favorite teacher, or the worst teacher I’ve ever met, or the experiences I went through when I first come to America. But because Amy Tan and Elizabeth Wong’s stories, I’d like to share the story about my first English teacher Mrs. Wu and my mother. So let me talk about Mrs. Wu first. I met her in the first year I went to elementary school. She is not the English teacher in school, and actually she was not the real first English teacher I met, but she made me interested in English. We already started to study English in grade one. However my parents thought the English that I learn in elementary school was too basic, and they thought English will be very useful. So they find me an English class outside the school, I met Mrs. Wu there. I didn’t want to have the class at first. I have no wish to learn a foreign language at that time. That means I have to spend half days to take that class on every weekends. No, that was not acceptable for me, I had dozens of cartoons didn’t watch, I had dozens of crickets didn’t catch, how can I spend half days in this class? However, my parent didn’t listen to me, I have to go. I am glade I went to there at last, or I must be regret now. The first meeting with Mrs. Wu was a Sunday afternoon. It was a rainy day, and I was not in a good mood because of the rain, and also because can’t play with my friend. My mother and I sit outside Mrs. Wu’s classroom, waiting for her, but all I wanted to do is playing on a swing. Suddenly, the classroom opened, and many students as my age walked out, talking and laughing. “They look like so happy,” I think, “maybe it’s not a bad idea to have class here.” Then a lady same as my mother’s age came out, with a kind smile. “You must be Huang,” she said. “ Your mom told you are very interested in English, right?” I looked at her, and all the sudden I forgot the cartoon I didn’t watch, the crickets I didn’t catch. Maybe English is interesting, and follow Mrs. Wu learn English is not a bad idea. “Ye, Yes!” I said. Then I started learning English with her. Mrs. Wu’s teaching style was very different from other teachers. We only had about 10 students in one class. So every students can have chance to speak, and ask questions. And in school we have over fifty students in one class, and teacher’s pronunciation was never even close to correct, and we barely speak English in school, we only do read and write. But Mrs. Wu told us, the four basic skills of English, read listen speak and write, are same important. And she want us talk much and listen much, don’t make our English “muted”. And she suggested us to watch American TV serious, like Friends or Growing Pains. “ They are really helpful,” she said, “ you can’t learn a language without communication or language environment. Think about how you learn Chinese, people around you speak Chinese every day, so you know how to speak Chinese naturally. When you are learning English, there’s no English speaker around you, watch TV shows becomes the best way to learn how American people talk.” I have to say, it’s been fifteen years, and I can hardly remember any of her classes, but I still remember the correct way to learn English form her. Learning English is not only remembering all the words from word list. Language is the tool to communicate, don’t afraid to talk, the much you talk, the less mistake you made. It makes me think about Amy Tan’s story. Her mother asked her daughter to make calls instead of herself, because she has no confidence of her English. And I had the same problem when I first came to America. I have no confidence to make any calls, I ask for translator every time. One day I realized that I came here for study, and I remember what Mrs. Wu taught me. I need to use English to talk to others. I try to use my “broken” English to report a problem to my Internet Company, and I was very suppressed that they could understand me. And my English improved very fast at that time. If Mrs. Wu was the right teacher, my mum must be the wrong teacher. My mum is a University’s professor in my hometown. And she thought her English level was very good, because in China, you have to pass a very difficult exam of English. And in that test, there are full of the words you’ve never seen before. My mother always tell me learning English means memorize words. She always force me to memorize all the word list form my English book. To be honest, that was painful. It’s very hard to remember these words only with Chinese translation, and without any example sentence or similar words. And my mom would test me by these word lists, she tells me the Chinese translation and I have to write the words. Sometimes if I write the synonym of a word, she would say that was wrong. The most incredible thing is although my mom doesn’t know how to pronounce a word, but she can know the meaning and spell. The truth always makes me disappointment, my mom’s way always helpful in my test. The reason is in Chinese high school, English tests only focus on grammar and reading. And most of the questions are multiple choices. None of the tests has speaking test, so remember a lot of words would really help for these tests. Although I know my mom’s weakness was listening and speaking, I can’t refute when I was in high school. Reading and listening skill seems like useless in Chinese high school. My mom can’t have conversations with foreigners, or understand an English TV show with out subtitles, but she can pass the hardest test in China. That was funny. However I still believe what Mrs. Wu told me, every English basic skill are important. I don’t want like mom, have a muted English. I watch a lot of America TV shows to learn how native speakers speak. I get up early every morning, read English book loudly to train my pronunciation. And like Amy chooses English major in college, I choose to finish my college in America. And now I can finally prove my mom was wrong, speak is very important in English learning. So I talked about two different people who are very important in my English learning experiences. One of them told me how to learn English correctly, one of them give me the motivation to learn English well, to prove she was wrong.