Today I have heard this thing: "What?? You have learned English in the last two years and you couldn't speak it fluently?"
Well, that was the reaction from a Pakistani friend that I just met today.
After some topics, I asked him that how long he has been learning English, he answered me it got from three to four months for him to speak English at this level.
After that was his reaction when I said I have been in Malaysia for two years and now I'm still looking for room to improve my English.
His thought was like: What kind of thing you want to improve?? You could not learn much from that two years, honestly? (And you have also been associated with many Malaysian people, right...???) - he was really surprised, kind of thinking it is really ridiculous when you could not learn anything from that - I'm sure that I'm not exaggerate his reaction.
But after some explanation, the problem was cleared up - both of us started understanding each other.
He comes from Pakistan, where the educational system is set by English. All of the grades from primary schools, elementary schools to high schools...etc, are using English; teachers teaching by English and students response in English too.
So you can easily to understand that all of them are familiar with it, from a young age.
The reason why he still need to learn English is, all of that teaching is just applying in school, non of this is used in their daily life; people there prefer to speak in their own language.
It is just like that, their people just only need to focus on English for three to four months, and then they can speak English very well, I means in daily life conversation. For Academic purpose, they need to learn more.
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But for us - the Vietnamese people.
When I explained to him that we are not familiar with the English system that much; I stared learning English first when I was at the age of 12, and all we learn in school is only "Hello, how are you?, I'm Fine, Thank you, And you?". And we maintain like this for the next 4 years.
Then he started understanding.
We are not contacted with English in early years of the age, and we do also not contact with it much in our daily life. That's why most of Vietnamese people facing difficulty in learning English.
- I'm not talking about the young generation now as they have lots of chances to contact with English and their parents now are really focus on this.
When he got understanding this - his reaction was eased. Because, at first, his response was very awful, it was like something that he could not accept; it looks ridiculous when you learned English for last two years and you could not communicate.
But through that, I got to understand why most of my Pakistani friends and my Indian friends they can speak English really well, while they always say to me that they just focus to study it for 3-5 months.
It's all because they got this in their education. It somehow helps them that way.
And for me, I am still on my long way to study English!
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KL - 27 May 2021
