English

Every time when I listen to my five–year old son speaking English very fluently, I always admire him. Looking back into my life, I’ve learned English for more than 35 years, and I’m still a student today. Why can’t I master English as quickly as my kid. I keep asking this question to myself very often.

When I was a primary school student, about 10 years old, I first learned the alphabet. That’s amazing to a kid who never met any English speakers in her life. Till now, I finally realized that English is not only a language, but also an open window to me to find out a brand - new world.

Even if I had studied English in my home country for 35 years, I would have had to improve it. Today, living in Canada I can’t still catch what my son’s teacher means. I can’t make jokes with English-speaking neighbor, although I think I truly have sense of humor, but only in my mother-tongue. I can’t answer all the questions in a subway, although sometimes I think the server’s accent is worse than mine, but he can ask the questions quickly and fluently. All of these make me deeply depressed, and another me whispers at night, “living in Toronto, who needs English!”. Finally, I wake up and tell myself, forget the previous 35 years, learn English from scratch, look out from this new opportunity window from now on, don’t be afraid. And find new, beautiful views from this window into the future.