Incompetent to Competent in English!
My Background
I was born into a middle class christian family in a small, beautiful village in Kerala; brought up by my grandparents. We lived in a very small house, surrounded by paddy fields on the two sides, a pond and a few other houses on the remaining two sides. I called my Grandmother “Amma” and my Grandfather “Pappa”. I had no memories of my parents as they had left abroad to purse their jobs three months after my birth.
I grew up under the wings of my grandma. It was time for me to go to school.I went to a school which was a boat ride away. Every morning my grandfather would hold my hands and pull me to my school. I was a cute little child, everyone smiled at me, tried to start a conversation with me. The school I studied was run by nuns and it was a Malayalam medium school, I was their favorite, They would pamper me with chocolates and fruits at the end of each school day. When I was big enough to start writing, they discovered that I was left handed. They tried their best to make me write with my right hand, eventually they succeeded. But the trade off was that my handwriting ended up being not very beautiful to look at. One fine day, after the new academic year had began, I found out that all my friends were in grade one while I was still in U.K.G. My grandparents told me that I’m an year younger and until I become six years old, I will not be allowed to enter grade one. I repeated an year and made new friends.
I was shifted to a new school in grade one.That school already taught its students Hindi in the lower grades. since I was new to Hindi they provided me with remedial classes to make me on par with the other students. It worked! I scored better than many in the subject.
The school was an English medium school, We weren’t allowed to use any other language than English. I was a decent student who stood above the average in every subject. Many of my friends, mostly girls used to call me and ask me doubts ( Maybe they found me charming back then). My grandma used to sit with me for two hours every weekend to make sure that I studied properly. She would tell that “I will allow you to watch Shaktiman and the Sunday movie only if you studied 2 hours each on Saturday and Sunday”.
I studied in the school for 4 years. My parents decided to move me to the UAE.
I got admission in a school. I studied there for 2 years. My academics dropped down, I was introduced to a new language “Arabic”. My neighbor being well versed in Arabic offered to teach me. She helped me to score decently in Arabic during rest of my school life. I had “Just” average performance in every subject except mathematics( I was very good at it unlike now!) and English. I never used to Study, my dad wanted me to study on my own,I never bothered to study still.Occasionally he would give me lectures but that never worked. I survived with the amount of listening I did in class.
Being Branded pathetic
English is another story, I was branded bad, poor , pathetic (all the synonyms of hopeless). My accent sounded like a malayale’s. My grammar was pathetic. I did not construct sentences properly. Every sentence I spoke had some kind of mistake or the other. I was told that I sound rude when I speak to people in English. During one of the open houses the English teacher told that “I’m poor and pathetic at English”(I figured out the meaning of pathetic only later, in high school”. I was again changed to a new school as the current school had only classes till grade 5.
The Change
The new school where I completed my High School was different. I made a lot of friends, the teachers were better. They taught well as a result I was slightly above the average this time in spite of zero effort from my side.(but never matched the expectation of my parents). Now, my friends started to correct me whenever I made a mistake while speaking. This helped me a lot to improve my language. A friend also showed me the huge school library, he got me into the habit of reading English books.
I started of Reading. I was eventually able to finish a 400 page book in 2 days. I kept reading throughout my school life. My grammar, vocabulary and sentence construction improved drastically without my knowledge.
There were times when I used to spend all my free times reading books and would spend a week reading 3–4 books, In the night dreaming about the series of events in those books.
I had friends who were not into reading, they would lend me their library books.
Slowly my command in the language started to reflect in school tests and aptitude tests.`
How to Improve English then?
- The first step is to start reading books. At least one book per week.
- Watch movies without subtitles. Try to understand what they are speaking.
- Make friends with people who speak better. They can really help you to improve yourself.
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