English, English, English
When I hosted the meetup on the last Friday, there’re a few non-Taiwanese nomads showed up. I then began to chat with them in English, in a fluent way that I used to think “only possible when I’m drunk” (but I wasn’t). It surprised me that, I wasn’t very confident about my English oral speaking skill, but for some unknown reasons, I seemed to get rid of that.
I’ve been told by many foreigners, “Taiwanese in general have good English skills”. That’s true, we have an education system that focus on English training from various aspect. The only pieces left is “oral speaking”, which is the reason why the most Taiwanese think they aren’t good in English because they can’t speak. We don’t have the environment for English speaking in a typical Taiwanese society. That makes me wondering: what changed me?
I would say it’s my backpacking time during the south east Asia trip
To be specific, it’s my time in Bali, Indonesia affects me the most. I stayed in the three hostels during that period and since there’re few Chinese on the island, everyone is speaking English (or Indonesian). I have no other way to connect with them but to use the language. Although it’s still hard for me to talk with native speakers like American or British, it helped me develop few friendships with non-native speakers because they’re more tolerant lol. I even hanged out twice with two different Germans.
Maybe writing in English also helps, too? I recently wrote few posts in English and obviously got fewer attentions compared to the Mandarin posts. Writing is a great way to help my neurons connected to each other in a native English speaking way.
Maybe staying in the hostels in Taipei helps. Although people comes and goes, it’s not easy to chat with each other in such a quick paced city. But I think it’s the viable way to be closed to an English environment.
What do you think? Let me know.
This is Tom Chen. I've been work remotely since 2015 and started solo backpacking from 2018. I want to share my journey with you:* Come to Taipei Digital Nomads Meetup and let's hangout & co-work
* Read my articles here: As a Digital Backpacker
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