my English experience

I began learning English at age of 10 in primary school. However, it is in 2005 that I fell in love with English and realized its importance in my life.

In 2005, the sixth book of Harry Potter was released. As a big fan of the Harry Potter Series, I could not wait to read the new book. However, the Chinese edition did not come out at that time. Coincidently, my relatives came back from UK with a Harry Potter in its original as a gift to me. With enormous passion and an English dictionary on hand, I launched an arduous journey of reading the English novel, trying to know what happened to Harry Potter. From then on, English opened a door to a new world for me. After I entered senior high school, I started reading popular English novels such as Sherlock Holmes series and The Lord of the Rings. In addition, I also read English books about science and technology including U.S. textbooks of mathematics, physics, and chemistry with concepts more clearly explained in order to better prepare for the National College Entrance Examination. Thanks to the experiences in high school, I felt comfortable to read English literatures and papers of my major at university.

Besides reading, I wrote. In 2009, the same year when I started to read English textbooks, I met wordpress.com, a free online blogging community. On this platform, I recorded my daily life, wrote book reviews and posted my thoughts about news and hot issues. The experience of writing English blogs not only improved my writing skills, but also greatly reduced my fear of writing in English. It is significant to get rid of the fear for English writing for any Chinese student. For fear of writing, my teammates in research projects always elected me to finish the hard part of our projects: writing papers in English. Admittedly, it was hard at the first time, yet I still struggled to finish it before the deadline by learning the standard format of English papers and the terminologies in English in the paper. Besides writing papers, I made some money by doing translation online, which often required professional knowledge in a specific field and fair searching skills on internet. These experiences have helped me improve my writing skills all the way.

Thanks to U.S. TV series and movies, my English listening and speaking comprehensions are not bad. In 2010, U.S. TV series started to spread over China Internet. Among them, I love Friends and How I Met Your Mother the best. By watching them without Chinese subtitles, I trained my listening and enriched my knowledge about daily communication in English. I was very proud when I could speak fluent English in English Corner activities at university and discuss the most recent TV series in English with my friends who also loved watching them. Recently, I was attracted to TED talks and Scientific American: 60-Second Science on the Internet, which required higher in listening comprehension to absorb new ideas and technologies in the world. Finally yet importantly, I attended some English lectures given by foreign professors in our university and in the city, in which I often talked with them to practice my English.

Hopefully my English skill continue to get improved in the future.