I still remember the first time I can recognize the meaning of language. At that time, I was a baby laying in my mother’s arms, she called my name gently and I knew she was calling me. Later, I remembered my father’s words, he explained exactly my thought to my mother when I was trying to touch a transparent glasses and to learn walk by holding the wall. Baby learn language automatically.

My mother language is Taiwanese, and l learned Mandarin in elementary school. At the beginning, whenever my family asked me what teacher taught me today, I replied “I don’t know” as I didn’t understand what teachers said in the class, but when I was a 2nd grade student, I suddenly found why there were two names for one object. I already mixed two languages together and used them perfectly without noticing it. Right now, Mandarin becomes my primary language as it is the main carrier of information in Taiwan, but I still like to talk with my family in Taiwanese as it brings us back to the beginning of the family – warm.

While, learning the third language, English, was a tragedy for me, and I believe is also for most of Taiwanese students. English word is a string of illogical symbols, put them together means a sentence, together with a lot of grammar rules and exceptions, and the only one answer for all of questions regarding learning English is “Memorize!”. So, my solution was “expel English from my life”, though I realized that I must have to face it eventually.

Why are the experience of learning Mandarin and English so different? I finally unravelled the root cause after struggling in English for many years. The answer is learning process. I learned Mandarin with the flow of Listen – Speak – Read – Write, but I learned English with a totally reversed process of Read – Write – (Listen/Speak). Language is initially a carrier used for listening and speaking since human being invented it millions years ago, and words were created to record voice after that. I never listened to English as listening was not included in school test then, English word is a symbol for me but not a voice. I never used English but studied it. As a result, my learning experience is reversed. Besides, the learning material is also a key factor. Normally, text books prefer teaching literature rather than practical tools, and we were taught poems before knowing how to survive with English.

Thanks for technology development, we now can create the environment to let us learn a new language efficiently. With sinking into the new language and following the basic patents at the same time, we will be able to be familiar with voices, figure out the structure of the sentence, practice, enrich the body with more vocabulary and expression skills, keep practice, and achieve the purpose we learn this language for.