My never-ending battle with the English Language

Since young, I was never good with languages as far as I can remember. I found it difficult to master subjects which focused mainly on linguistics- be it English or my mother tongue, Tamil. Surprisingly, there were times when I topped the class in kindergarten for Chinese, a language I learnt in kindergarten since the place I was enrolled in did not offer any other second languages. However, if anyone comes up to me to test my rusty Chinese language skills today, I will probably write yī, èr, sān and send them away because I hardly have any knowledge of what I learnt approximately 14 years ago.

Moving on from kindergarten, primary school life was when I first learnt that English was not all that it was said to be. There were many new aspects of English that I had not encountered till I began that particular chapter of my life- cloze passages, vocabulary, comprehension passages, oral examinations and many more. I managed to adapt to the new syllabus and put in my utmost effort in the subject. Thankfully, I scored pretty well and was offered a place in secondary school. 

Smooth-sailing journeys do not not last very long in my book though. Once in secondary school, I started to find it really tough to stabilise my grades in language-based subjects, especially in English. One moment I will be getting decent grades and the next, I will be struggling to even get a pass in the subject. These unpredictable drastic changes I constantly faced demotivated me even more. I did not know what I was doing wrong. On the other hand, I had no clue about what I was doing right either. Every English examination, from then on, came down to luck. I went into examination halls not knowing what to expect and came out of the halls the exact same way. Lady Luck was on my side during the O's and I managed to get a grade slightly above average. Truthfully, when I saw that grade on my results slip, I felt like there was still a tiny hope for the language. In that moment, I told myself not to give up and to continue to put in at least some effort into the subject, English. Little did I know that a whole new dimension of English was awaiting me. 

Yes, General Paper, also known as GP in Junior College was the toughest battle I had ever had with a language in my whole academic life. There were no longer narratives and comprehension passages were felt as though aliens were writing them- I could hardly understand a thing and it was mandatory for me to check the dictionary at least 10 times in a single passage. "How am I going to complete a comprehension passage together with its summary in a mere 1 hour 30 minutes?", I had thought to myself more than a gazillion times. Apart from that, I was required to read newspapers, have basic knowledge on statistics and figures and more. Having an interest in crime-related news, I always had the habit of flipping newspapers to see if anything crime-related has occurred, even before my time in junior college. However, I realised that having crime-related knowledge alone is not going to get me through GP easily. All of a sudden, I found myself having to forcibly pay attention to other types of news headlines and develop an interest in them that I never had all these years. 

Not only that, when I was in secondary school, my fluctuating grades in English at least gave me a tiny bit of hope. In Junior College, however, my grades became stagnant. Regardless of how much I tried, I did not see a change- it was always a D, E or a F. I was so frustrated with myself that there were countless of times that I felt like giving up. I felt like all hope was lost. There were times I would just stare blankly at the question paper and there were times I would get so angry with myself for not being able to come up with anything that I felt like crushing up the question paper. This was the period of time when English and I had hit rockbottom and I thought that the end of my A levels marked the end of my battle with English.

I was utterly mistaken. Just last year, prior to my enrolment in university, I learnt that not doing well in GP meant that there was a QET (Qualifying English Test) coming my way. You may ask how I managed to do the QET after I declared that English and I were eternal foes. Just to clarify, it was not any different on the day of my QET. I did what I had always done since many years before- left it up to luck. 

Here I am, in 2014, after scoring averagely in my QET, required to take ES1102, an English for Academic Purposes module. Truthfully, I did come in with a rather negative mindset- thinking about how this module is going to help my English language skills after everything else failed. As I had mentioned before, English could not get any worst for me than it already has. However, after attending my first week of lessons, I felt there may be some kind of hope left, at least 1%. By diligently completing my assignments and paying attention to lessons, I hope that my English language skills will improve, even if it is in the slightest way by the time I graduate from this module. The next few months will determine if my hard work will turn the tables around or continue my downward spiralling journey with the English language. All in all, it seems apparent that my battle with the English language will be a lifelong one but I am ready to give it one last try.