
My Story of Learning English
I started learning English at the age of 22, which is kind of late to start studying a language. Of course the age is not relevant if you really want to learn something, I support lifetime learning experiences. However it is also a fact that kids learn languages much faster than adults.
Anyway, I was accepted to a program to study English first and then to study Finance in the United States. I was first supposed to complete the six-month long English study and get 550 TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score in order to get the scholarship to go to the USA.
It was a challenging task to get 550 from TOEFL in six months for someone who started learning English from scratch. However the six-month-long program was very intensive and included some TOEFL targeted lessons too.
In order to start the program, I moved to a different city and I rented a house with a friend who was also joining the same program.
We did not have any distractions such as televisions or computers or smart phones, anyways there was no smartphones back then. I am talking about 1995 and apparently we were kind of lucky to get fewer distractions.
We had classes every weekday from 8:30 to 16:30 with a lunch break only. We had different teachers for reading, writing, listening and grammar. But I remember there was no speaking lessons actually, maybe because it was not tested in TOEFL back then, is it tested now I am not sure.
The lack of speaking lessons would cause me some troubles later in the USA. But I will come back to that in a while.
Everyday after the classes were over we would directly go back home and have something for dinner and start doing daily homework and repeat works. This study would go on until we become sleepy and usually we would finish it by midnight.
I remember this ritual would go on and on for six months, the only distraction we had was the weekend movie break where we used to go to a movie theater to watch a Hollywood movie to improve our listening.
Both my friend and I was obsessed with learning English and making it to 550 TOEFL and go to the USA. There was absolutely nothing else in our lives.
At the end of the program I took the TOEFL and was the only person to get 550 score from the beginners’ class. After a few weeks I was ready to go to the USA.
My destination in the States were in California La Quinta, I remember landing in the airport close to midnight, there was no one to pick me up, not even a hotel was arranged. So I was alone with the 550 TOEFL score to make my way through, well it was not that easy, the score did not help me at all.
I remember asking very simply and probably wrongly to some people how to go to a hotel, and in return I would understand nothing. But somehow I got one word from one person’s talk “CORNER” and with the help of his hand gestures I was able to go to a corner where there were some direct free phones to call specific hotels.
So I picked up one of the phones, it was written La Quinta Hotel on the phone. Someone said something, probably “La Quinta Hotel, How may I help you ?“ but did not understand anything.
I was trying to explain my situation with my broken English although I hated to look stupid speaking a terrible English, but I had to do it otherwise I would end up staying over night in the airport not knowing what to do in the morning.
Eventually I managed to understand that there were direct Hotel Shuttle buses from the airport but it was already too late. The guy on the phone was very nice and probably felt sorry for me and instructed to me with a slow and very clear English to go outside to the bus station and wait there for La Quinta Hotel shuttle bus. Apparently he would send the bus just for me.
I was not sure if I understood him correctly but I had no choice but to go outside and wait, after about 20 minutes I saw a minibus with big La Quinta Hotel marks. It was that moment that I felt success in learning English because somehow I was able to communicate. TOEFL score did not mean much in terms of communication, what matters the most is the communication with people, which tells me that Listening, and Speaking should play a major role in learning a language.
It took me about 3–4 months to comfortably explain myself and understand people’s responses on daily and not complex conversations.
I am a learner of the English language ever since, it never ends, today I am able to understand and speak fairly complex subjects but there are occasions where I feel like my English is not enough to capture the essence of the topic. Then I read more and study more to get one more red flag out of the way.
All the best to you in your journey of mastering a language.
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