What has been your journey like learning foreign languages?

     In my journey of foreign language learning, the first language I learned was English. I first got to know the existence of English in the stage of kindergarten. There were three teachers teaching English in turn, and all of them spoke no Mandarin to the kids during the class. It was my first stage learning English.

After entering elementary school, I went to an English cram school to learn English, and I left there after graduating from junior high school. The teacher of the cram school taught us in various of interesting way in first three years, including games, learning sheets, and outdoor activities, not just teaching the students in traditional English textbook as the school did. After we became fourth grader students, courses taught in junior high school were add to us. Later on, I began to learn courses as the senior high students did when I became a junior high school student. That is to say, I had been learning ahead comparing to other classmates at school at this cram school.

Since I entered junior high school, my English learning process turned into test-oriented one, though this English teacher featured diversity when it comes to her teaching style. When I turned into a senior high school student, I transferred another cram school which was test-oriented for senior high school students. There, I learned English almost for tests, exams, and even qualification exam.

After entering English department in university, I pushed myself to speak as much English as I can because comparing to other classmates, my oral skill was much worse than them. Also, as a junior now, I often think of the process and the results of my English learning. As a student who has learned English for over ten years, I should speak as fluent as native speakers do. However, I seldom learned to speak, especially after I entered senior high school. Many teachers put emphasis on taking teat and getting high scores. Thus I focused on the grammar, writing, translation, and reading. Indeed I got high scores on my college entrance exam, but I do not think I am a good English user as other people who also learned English for over ten years. Oral is not the only thing I have to learn when learning English, but I always think it the most important skill when mentioning learning a new language.

Besides English, I also learned Korea and Spanish when I became college student. I learned Korean because I enjoy listening and watching k-pop. Though there are so many people helping translate the videos into Mandarin or English, many other videos are not translated and added subtitles. What’s more, from my perspective of view, translation of the lyrics would prevent me from getting the true meaning and the concept the composers would like to convey in the songs. I learned Korean for one year, as I was a sophomore last two semesters. Though I paused learning Korean this semester, I would resume in the spring semester.

As for Spanish, I am just a beginner since this semester. The reason is due to one senior high school teacher once told us his story of learning Spanish and speak it with many people in Spain and southern cities of the U.S., and he also volunteered to be the translator in some international sports events held in Taiwan. After entering NCCU, I have always heard that the Spanish class is worth taking, and many classmates of English department also took the class and most of them highly recommended the course. As a result, I selected the course and begin to learn a whole new language.