English and Monkie

English ignited my interest when I was only a little girl. I still remember playing in the bathroom mumbling words that did not make sense at all while showering. I wholeheartedly believed that I was speaking English. That was during my elementary school years.

When I became a six-grader, mom took her friend's suggestions (and asked about our wills) sending me and my sister to Hess English School. From there, I learned English from the letters and greetings. Finally I didn't need to mumble pretending speaking English. I knew how to speak English!

The three years in Hess, I had lots of first experiences about English. I got my first and only English name, Karen. I participated impromptu speech competition and won the first prize. I was sent to dictionary look-up competition before I ever had a dictionary and knew how to look up in the dictionary but still got the first prize (the only points being taken off were because I didn't understand how to read the dictionary Chinese typesetting therefore I answered the translation wrong.) I was also picked to participate in the recitation competition. This time I only made it to the second round, and didn't make it to the final. Chatting to Native speaker teachers was fun. Playing games was fun. Maybe I really had some interests in English from the very beginning. During the three years of 12 level English class, I got all the first prize graduating from each level except the last one I was the 2nd prize.

After the 12 level classes, Hess has advanced English class which takes maybe another 1.5 years or 2 years to finish. I studied the first one, but didn't get to finish the next two. My dad thought my English is good enough,and I should spend that time for other subjects, for example math. The major difference of advanced class from the 12 level class is that we only have native English speaker teacher in the advanced class. That was a strong confirmation and excitement for me to study there. You no longer have a Chinese English teacher sit at the back of the classroom to help when students can not understand English teacher's words. I still remember Mike, my native English teacher, telling me he's so sorry to lose me as a student on the first day of the 2nd advanced class. (Different continents was the lesson that they were going to talk about in the class. I still remember!) In retrospect, I don't really know if stopping English really helps my math or not. However, after junior high school, my English ability no longer shined brightly as it did before.

In junior high school, English was never a subject that I need to spend time studying. Just finish the school assignment, memorize several new words, I pretty much can switch to the next subject. However, after I entered senior high, not sure what was the reason, my academic performance never got to be great any more. New vocabulary lists became too long to remember them all. Guess I was still better memorizing English lesson context than Chinese. Anyway, English was an o.k. subject in my black senior high years.

After I got into college, English class suddenly became easy again for me. I was still haunted by my poor senior high experience, however, I soon discover that my classmates were all not that great in English. Frank was one of the important and encouraging professors in my college years. He was my English teacher who constantly confirmed me that my English is as good as students who major in English. Having the best grades in class is easy for me. Oral presentation experience also helped me to see that I am somewhat better than other people. If I really need to say what changed me during that time, it could be the year in cram school preparing college entrance exam that I really studied pretty hard and brought all the vocabularies I need to know into my head. Frank kept encouraging me to enroll in a speech competition. However, during the four-year college time, I always found excuses not to go. I even enrolled at my senior year, but ended up not showing up because I didn't finish my article for the topic that we can prepare at home. :P

During college year, I tried to improve my English on and off. Time review magazine was one of the magazine I subscribed, but I don't think I ever finished reading them. However, studying abroad has already been my goal. English was an essential tool that I need to use and I didn't afraid to spend as much time as possible.

I honestly didn't have great TOEFL and GRE scores. The bad studying habits starting from senior high till college made this result not a surprise for me.