Liao

Liao, En-Jan (Erin)

ESL33B Project 1
16 March 2017
From an Enemy to a Friend

At the end of the speech given by Steve Jobs at Stanford, he said, stay hungry, stay

foolish. He indicates that learning new things should be continuous for everyone and should

not be limited by age. In my country, Taiwan, learning foreign languages is really common

because almost everyone thinks that it could increase ones competitiveness in the future. So

many parents would want their children to study one more language other than Chinese.

Unsurprisingly, my parents sent me to a bilingual kindergarten, so I have studied

English for almost fifteen years. Although English and I are coexisting peacefully now, I

had lost my passion of learning English or even hated it before, yet a teacher lightened the

candle again. My English learning journey might not be as dramatic as others, but it is still

interesting to listen to because it is like a process of an enemy became a friend, in which I

learn that motivation does not only affects students attitude and behavior, but also influences

students performance toward their academic goals.

As I mentioned, I started my journey with English when I was in kindergarten, and

English was like a stranger to me back then. However, I embraced it because the teachers

were kind and gentle to me. Also, they used some fun ways to teach us English, which
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include playing games, singing songs, and drawing pictures. I was too nave to think that

learning English was fun and simple. Hence, I really enjoyed every English class in my

kindergarten and elementary school, and I did not realize that it was just the calm before the

storm. The nightmare came during my junior high years.

In Taiwan, junior high school students are required to take the examinations in order to

enter the high schools that have good reputations, and traditional Chinese families would

gave their children some pressure of going to the famous senior high schools because they

that those who have better education will have brighter future. Moreover, my parents have

high expectation on me because I am the only child, so the high school entrance examination

is really important for me. One of the subjects that would be tested is English, so my

purpose of learning English transferred from entertainment to assessment. This was a huge

change for me because the task became harder, which I started to learn more aspects of

English such as grammar, idiom, and sentence structure. Also, the teachers became more

serious and lack of energy and passion. Their lectures were dull, and they always gave me the

impression that I just want to get my work done. Then I resisted putting effort into studying

English, and English became an enemy to me.

Unfortunately, I was a fixed mindset as Carol Dweck explains in her book Mindset:
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The New Psychology of Success that fixed mindset people are unwilling to face the

challenge, and do not believe in their own abilities. Hence, I did better on other subjects tests

rather than English. My exam score was similar to what Tan mentions in her essay, Mother

Tongue where she writes, Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on

math achievement tests than in English (50). As a result, I was unable to go to a good senior

high school due to my test result, so I decided to study in an international school in Taiwan.

And this decision serves as an inflection point in my life.

I went to an international school called Wagor International School. The founder of

Wagor International School is also a boss who has several clubs in Taichung, so the school

would accept any students as long as they have enough money to pay the expensive tuition.

Although the school has a bad reputation, the teachers over there are highly educated and

well trained. I met a teacher who changes my opinion on English: Ms. Chau. Ms. Chau was a

strict teacher who taught me social studies and writing in my entire senior high school year.

She gave well-organized lectures, and she tried to push students to the edge to test their

abilities, limitations, and potentials by giving us college-level assignments such as writing

12-pages research papers and creating our own Shakespeare sonnets. Honestly, I was

overwhelmed by these heavy works at the beginning, but I was slowly get used to her
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teaching method and I did not even notice it.

Moreover, her passion and determination of training students made me feel enthusiastic

and encouraging. Every time I completed her assignments, I was confident that I could

handle college homework already. Ms. Chau is not only a helpful teacher, but also a life

mentor for me. By the end of my senior high school year, I did not just acquire a satisfied

score on the TOEFL, but also resolve the conflict between my enemy and me.

Overall, English has accompanied me for a long time and it plays a significant role in

almost every stage in my life. During my journey, I realized that students learning

motivations are strongly related to teachers teaching motivations. Thus, I believe with what

Harris states in his article, What True Education Should Do that the job of teaching is not

to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within (5).

In the other words, it is a chain effect that the higher quality of education provided by

teachers would affect students learning motivations as well as their further outcomes,

achievements, and successes.

Therefore, I hope that I can improve my English writing skills in this class, and I

strongly believe that the professor has the same goal as I have. Nevertheless, I believe that

people do anything with a purpose, and sometimes we would face some unexpected factors or
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obstacles that we have to conquer. Despite of those distractions, we should not forget our

original intentions or motivations while we are pursuing our aims. So I will not forget my

eagerness of learning English when I was little, and I hope that we will not fight again.
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Work Cited

Spack, Ruth. Guidelines: A Cross-Cultural Reading/Writing Text. 3rd ed. New York:
Cambridge UP, 2007