After so many years of learning
English, I finally found I would need to be working hard and improve on my
English writing skills. Since I was young, teacher has taught me about
all the English grammars, word forms, verb forms, tenses, sentence structure
etc. Nevertheless, my English writing is still consider very week along my
academic study path.
My life totally changed in 2004, it
was the year that I was sent to a new environment to receive the local
education and every lesson was taught in English except the Chinese lesson once
a week. I remembered during the first three months in my secondary school that
I rarely understood what the teachers were talking about; it was like a strange
world for me. Whenever teacher asked me about something, like handing homework
or answering any questions on the white board, I needed my Chinese neighbor to
translate for me. However, soon after about three months, I realized that I can
understand most of the English, since then I tired to communicate with others
but not practiced so much on writing.
During the last year in my
secondary study, I was preparing for the ‘O’ level examination; my friends and
I formed a small group of four people to study together. It was proved to be a
wrong strategy after I received my ‘O’ level results; which lead I failed my
English and got other subjects either A or B. It gave me a huge impact in that
time and the world seemed to be grey in colour. Luckily, I managed to get a
place at Republic Polytechnic, I became an engineering student, and my course was
renewable energy engineering. During the three years study in poly, I
found I was able to get good results in most of the Understanding Test, which
called UT, and most facilitators in RP gave me relative good daily grades,
which they judged according to our daily performance in class. In the last semester,
I was doing my attachment with one manufacturing company in woodlands, I learnt
many useful knowledge about manufacturing machines and processes, I also
involved in Quality Control department to use different machine for different
products.
After I finished the company’s
attachment, I was ready for graduation. Luckily, I was successfully accepted by
both NUS and NTU by using my local diploma results. I was so happy that no word
could describe me. After a few days, I received the offer letters, only then I
noticed there is a QET test for me, suddenly I felt a sense of nervous because
I knew that I might fail this test and attend extra classes. I started to panic
and searched online all the tips for the test, and then I noticed it was not
really about the tips but the use of the English language. I did bought a book
to read other people’s essay and tried to practice on my own. Nevertheless, it
was nearly impossible to improve my English writing very much in such a short
period. Hence, I needed to face the reality, which was that I needed to
go for extra English lessons.
Now I feel very proud that I have
been enrolled in ES1102 class, I found a great facilitator who can inspire me
to learn English well in both writing and speaking. I believe with the
help of my facilitator, my English will be much better after the twelve weeks
learning journey.
