1.0 Recalling the Journey of English Learning: A Memoir of Obsession and Confession

After completed my second poetry manuscript, I took my time off at a humble corner of a coffee shop located adjacent to the congested cross street. Living in the Solo District of the city, I enjoyed the roast tip of the coffee and caffeinated with new ideas on new projects. One thing for sure: I deterred returning to my first draft to start the tiresome proof-reading process. On the brink of an eye, I came up with one boring idea: sharing my experience and thoughts on the prolong journey of English-learning. At the time of writing this sort of confession, I am honored to be a teaching assistant in English at University, Writer, Editor and Proof-reader on some occasion. I shall put my wisdom and genuine in full disclosure. I should convey the message by learning English in a smarter way, but by some painful enforcement of memorization and bad confrontation of formality. Therefore, I am here to share and tell you my story about the pain and wreck in the journey.

Like many individuals, I started off my journey as a Second language learner in English. I began my early education- kindergarten and primary school- in Singapore, a partly English-speaking country. The learning experience was shielded off due to the mother tongue Chinese and the cultural segregations embedded in the social system within. As relieving from the cultural shock dragged upon the wavy whirlpool, the localised English was just a side product with the mixture of orange juice, soy sauce, and Indian curry. My Singapore’s experience did build up some English foundation such as the ability to speak, to write longer sentence, to use “Singlish”, and to learn some advanced level vocabularies.  At the beginning, it was great. But as time goes by, I felt that English system has lacked coherence and wisdom in the use of contemporary English. Or shall I put into another way; ‘Singlish’ in terms of its common usage was nowhere compatible to the universal of other English-speaking country. The localised English stays in the world of Meritocracy by proving one outrages than others. Of course, it was very wrong to do so after experiencing years of rise and fall.

In my high school year, I felt I was learning English in a factory not in the wild where there were living animals and plants. There was no teaching lesson about English literature or English book in general. (Later I found out that English Teachers were not often holding a university degree in English or Linguistic…etc.) All we had done was to go over the syllabus that was nearly identical to those English grammar and vocabulary workbooks from the bookshop. Also, the grading criteria and rubrics framed the teaching guidelines upon the correctness of a subjective statement but not as an objective mindful handcraft (yes, I wrote the exam with pencils.) As a result, the education system itself produced a bunch of English purists to police everyone in the field about the correctness of ‘what should be’ instead of ‘how should be’. I remembered after scoring high in the TOEFL exams, especially in the reading and writing sections, I applied the same writing principles back to the high school exam. My English teacher just crossed out the entire essay all in red. It left me in tears and later we went on a heated argument on this very subject with no closure even to present days. Don’t they teach us something about humanity?

Acknowledgement and recognition arrived since my undergraduate years. While working towards to degree program in the United States, I solidified my English and Mathematics foundation during the freshman and sophomore year. I combated all the way from ESL (English of Second Language) courses which taught me to move beyond grammar and vocabulary to English Writing, Literature, Creative Writing including drama, plays, poetry, short-stories, critical-thinking and to reflect in critics. ESL opened the door of understanding English culture by making the common usage of English straight to the point of expression. I had to put down my shadowing burden driven by a self-imposed hardship in my early years. Instead, I must use plain (simple) English in an effective and intellectual way.

There is nothing wrong to learn a new language. From my experience, I recommend one doing so to start early before school life. Child development researchers ascertained that it would be favorable for youth to adopt new languages along with their brain development. As many known, Asian parents are demanding and coercing for a talented social ritual. Their grateful wish of a learning habit turned into a contravene disaster: memorising vocabularies, building up robust grammar structure, and writing lack-of-taste articles due to exams. Parents were blind sighted with a lot of techniques to motivate their children to learn English in an ebullient way. But there are systemic structures and rationale to build-up vocabulary for example, and good writers could ‘play’ with grammar in writings. Those neglected elements distort the use of learning English in a good way. In the upcoming series, I am sure I will touch upon 1) vocabulary-building from the structural point of view (Prefixes, Suffixes, Base Words, and Root Words), 2) common usage of English Grammar and problems within, 3) good writings in general, and 4) other interesting topics. I will discuss more detail later.

Thanks to A.I, teachers are more likely to lose their job in the future. Yesterday, I was in a fast-food restaurant trying to cover my ears from the loud disturbance of a guy. He was downplaying the learning perspective for future high school students. He said A.I could type whatever they wanted to learn in a chatbot and display the materials from a credential database instantly. Yes, I admittedly it could to some extent; you can generate a formal article or letter in a second; you can generate a lesson plan with reality-like examples; you can proofread your essay with good revision and resources. You can complete many impossible tasks than before. But one thing A.I still cannot provide aesthetic feeling to the article, or ‘play’ with the grammar like many legends in the past. There are yet some opened room to us as an English learner to manoeuvrer around.

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