After several failures, Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric bulb in 1879, and he quoted “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” This shows his commitment and determination in his work which finally led to one of the most important inventions of mankind. All his life, he invented so many things which changed the lives of human beings in this world. His most famous quote, “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”, is still inspiring the young minds around the world. I would say that this man was my role model and inspiration. It will not be an exaggeration when I say that it is the constant determination and perseverance that has helped me to accomplish something which I yearned for – learning to speak in English fluently.
The purpose of this essay is to describe the challenges I encountered in my life in the learning process of the English language and how I overcame the challenges with my persistence and the results of my hard work. I would also like to brief on how the quality of persistence is going to benefit my future life.
I hail from the city of Chongqing, a small provincial city in the Republic of China. English was not a part of our primary school education and my first encounter with the universal language came when I was in my 7th Grade in school, as a part of learning a foreign language. I do not belong to a family of English-speaking members and naturally my first exposure to the language was disastrous. I had to face a lot of challenges in learning the language. Almost all my classmates had previously studied the language from their family members. As a newbie, my p’s were confused with the q’s and my d’s were often replaced by b’s.
I had big problems pronouncing the English words, given my totally Chinese background, and I humiliated myself trying to speak English in front of my fellow mates. My classmates made fun of my English and started avoiding me because of my ignorance. I found it awkward to speak in English and developed a new fear of the language. I feared making mistakes and being humiliated by my classmates. This was the first challenge I faced. I resolved to learn to speak the language, correctly and fluently. To fulfill my resolution, I put aside my fears and became bold enough to start speaking English despite my chances of getting scoffed. I took every opportunity to speak English in front of the class.
To practice speaking English more, I had to create an English-speaking environment. This was again another challenge because Chongqing was not an English-speaking community. Although I learned the basics of grammar and usage in English from school, the curriculum did not hold anything about the practical aspects of English conversational skills. The way I found to practice my speaking ability was to hold a conversation to myself or my mirror image using the texts in my school curriculum.
Self-conversation was however a limited way for learning to speak. I had to find friends who could help me speak better. I made friends with those students who had good English speaking skills and used them as a benchmark to grade my language. This helped me to find my faults and strengths very precisely. I also started listening radio programs such as “voice of America” and continued practicing my speaking by imitating the sentences they had used. This helped to improve my English a lot.
With five years of constant perseverance, I made extraordinary progress in my English speaking skills. Although I was tempted to stop my work on English speaking many times, I never gave up my goal and worked harder. This has become very successful as now I excel most of my classmates in English proficiency.
What I have achieved over the last five years has brought me immense pleasure and a position in my class as good English speaker. I am no longer scoffed at by my fellow mates for my bad pronunciation. This has also taught me that with constant hard work and determination, we can win anything in life. I am sure that my persistence and determination to succeed will surely help in fulfilling most of my dreams and will lead to a successful career and life.