A special period in a journey‘

时间：2008-09-18 00:00:00  来源：杭州平和  作者：余灵珊

 简述：《“平和英语杯”我的英语学习之路普通组应征文》作者余灵珊。来自：河北省保定市河北大学外国语学院。

A special period in a journey

余灵珊

08-09-17

While a singer chooses “long journey” to describe the truth of life, I adopt it to comment on the way to master the English language. Being able to chat fluently with foreigners, and to write exactly in English, we may proudly say that we’ve arrived at the other shore after accomplishing the long journey fraught with setbacks and plagued with pitfalls.

As a English major student, English to me is the water to fish. The day when I was matriculated by Hebei University, I was harassed by the wondering how to fulfill the transformation of turning English into my mother tongue. In my first two years, I, with an unswerving target to achieve the improvement, was busy joining various activities related with English including “Speech Contest”, words contests etc. However, without any obvious effect, I realized what I had done was in vain. Then for quite a long time, I was overwhelmed by endless hollowness. In my this summer holiday, just when I were planning how to spend a meaningful and precious holiday, several neighbors came one after another, asking me whether I’d like to teach their children. Hearing this, I found a little frown came quickly between my eyes. But finally I replied “yes”, though I was little haunted by the confusion how to teach.

Such then “my school” began. I separated my students into three groups: Primary level, Intermediate level, and Higher level. According to my schedule my first class was to teach the primary students, to whom English was a blank. I believed that was an easy task. Actually, it ran smoothly as I had predicted. A further difficulty lied in my second class, not because they were the famous naughty children, but rather I was requested to teach “them” the phonetics by which I myself was confused. It was impossible for me to refuse, so I had to teach according to my remaining memories, however, when I referred to the short vowels, I was questioned by one of them how to distinguish the long vowels and the short vowels. At that time, stared, I lost in deep thought striving to remember that chunk of knowledge, but it seemed that all my knowing was winkled out by someone else. I didn’t know what to say, only to skip this difficult question by excusing that it was beyond today’s category. Time slipped away, it’s my third class, the higher level students, at the very beginning, I let them do exercises in order to know them well. During that time, once again, I, with my face blushing found it was hard for me to explain exactly the grammar, because I got a little confused of some questions myself. Knowing that it was the truth that usually students would little note nor long remember the right thing a teacher teaches, but they never forget the mistakes a teacher makes, I dared not explain any more. Time seemed to stop at that moment. Fortunately, I had a quick wit in that emergency by saying that I needed time to check the answers, so all the classes were over.

After class, I looked back and reflected on what I had done, and then I realized my preoccupation was to prepare well, in other words, to make myself penetrating before the classes. Then I got on the internet to download the international phonetics, followed by imitation and practice many times until I was able to recite and pronounce purely. From then on, I acquired the habit to practice the phonetics and to imitate foreign speakers every morning, through which I found my oral English has continued to improve gently. Besides, I looked over several grammar books, and made PowerPoint to show them clearly. Through this, I mastered the grammars. And I believe, this time I will remember the English grammar all my life.

This was my holiday, learning through teaching, a special period in the long journey, which is worth doing and I would gladly do it again if the chance were offered me.

网络支持：Rebecca&May