Entry 1

Dear Meowmeow,

    Throughout my life, language learning has played an important role. I grew up in a multilingual environment. Since I was two, I’ve started to listen to English nursery rhymes and move my body with the music. Gradually, I could sing the English songs and even read the comic books written in English. At this point, I already acquired some English phrases such as “good night” and “thank you very much”. Learning a language didn’t seem too hard for me at the moment.

    After I got into the elementary school, the whole atmosphere went totally different. We began to learn new vocabulary and tried to make up short sentences in English class. The English teacher asked us to repeat her words again and again. At the beginning, I wasn’t quite used to this kind of learning method. Whenever I wanted to learn things in my own way, I would be strictly scolded by the teachers. Things didn’t get better until I attended the cram school in our neighborhood. I went to the cram school twice a week and the teachers there are half foreign and half native. On Wednesdays, the Chinese teacher would teach us the definition of a word and grammar. On Saturdays, the American teacher used different games to show us the pronunciation of the vocabulary and we even practiced speaking English in dialogues. With the help of the cram school, I finally found my interest in English back.    

    I left the cram school after I attended junior high school. I studied in a private bilingual school and the teachers there kept emphasizing the importance of English. We even took ESL classes which are taught by foreign teachers. These teachers came from countries all over the world such as South Africa, Canada, Australia, and so on. Therefore, we got to acquire different kinds of accent and proverbs around the world. This was actually really helpful for my later studies. In my six years of high school life, I memorized thousands of new vocabulary and hundreds of phrases. I understood all the grammar taught by the teachers and I could even correct their errors. However, none of the above left me the best ability. To me, the most important thing I learned is the way to learn aa new language.

    Here are three points that I value the most when learning a new language. First of all, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. I used to be ashamed of myself whenever I made mistakes in either word usage or pronunciation. However, if I never made those mistakes, I might never get better by revising them. The next one is paying full attention. I found many of my classmates trying to learn two languages or more at the same time. To their disappointment, it always ended up a mess. If we want to learn a new language in a sufficient and effective way, we should pay full attention to it. Last but not least, don’t miss the details. Many people tend to focus more on the main principles than the details. In my opinion, understanding all the details of a language can make people know about the language more thoroughly. The details are actually the soul of a language.