My English Language Learning Journey

As the official language in Taiwan is Mandarin, only Mandarin is taught and thus, my English learning journey began when I was in primary three. Realizing the importance of English, my parents decided to send me to an English tuition class.

However, there was always a limitation of learning English in a Mandarin speaking society. After finishing my secondary education, my sisters and I were sent to Singapore for further education as Singapore is a country with English as an official language. Nevertheless, this was a challenge for me, especially when I was not only unfamiliar with the languages in Singapore, but also the cultures and religions.

For the first two years in Singapore, I could not communicate in English confidently and Mandarin was still my main medium with my classmates. The drastic change only happened after I entered Temasek Polytechnic. Most of my classmates were non-Chinese. In order to survive in this environment, I was forced to speak in English. Although it was not pleasant at the start due to wrong usage of English words, after multiple corrections by friends, I was able to communicate in English confidently.

My English learning journey was not so smooth as I have faced different kinds of mistakes. Through English, I managed to make fore friends from different backgrounds and learned the cultures and religions from them. Even though my English is not perfect, it fulfills me to be more 'human'. Learning English is a long journey, and I hope I can capture more in depth knowledge of learning English language in the future.