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This letter comes from Xuesi (in bracket are my comments):
"May I write to you in this free style?
(Yes, you can be a bit forward with me. I won't feel offended. I'm not that kind of boy. Only allow me to be straightforward with you - two can play that game.)
"I have read your article titled 'Habeas Corpus, may the court help us' in the China Daily website and was deeply touched by it.
"I am a university graduate (2005) majoring in Civil Engineering.
(Hold on a second. Which part did you say you're deeply moved by? It pains me when people appear to have set out to sing my praise but stop then and there before I have even begun to revel in the good attention. You're not being convincing, but thanks all the same.)
"I'm very interested in English and want to change my major into English.
(Civil Engineering sounds good to me. It sounds good to most English majors I assure. We all want what other people have.)
"I took part in the postgraduate examination before graduation but failed. However, I have continued to study English, this time setting my sights on passing the postgraduate exam for 2006.
(This is the best I've heard from you yet. Failing the first time can only help your second attempt - if you make that attempt, that is.)
"I have also been learning French all by myself. I've worked hard but still feel confused. My score is not so satisfactory.
(I've heard of people who've mastered quite a few foreign languages. But none of them seem to have tried to prepare for an exam on one language by learning another. When you have an English exam to pass, I don't know if learning French helps. Rather, it could be a distraction. Perhaps French can wait. In my case, French has been lurking in the back, waiting to be picked up again something like for ever. Sometime along the way, I gave up trying, having realized that I was learning French only so that I could brag about that fact.)
"I learned from the China Daily website that you were an English major of Beijing Foreign Studies University.
(I was and what of that? Yes, the university gave me everything. It is the reason, the only reason that I'm writing to you in English now and still feeling inadequate in expressing myself in that lovely language. I may have left university almost 20 years ago but I have never wavered in holding them responsible for my imperfect English. Just kidding.)
"You must know how difficult it is to learn English, especially for a Civil Engineering major like me. But I'm really interested in English. My education background means the only way out is for me to go for postgraduate studies in English. I write this letter in the hope that I'll get some suggestions from you about the way of learning English and your feelings of working with that language.
"Best wishes - Xuesi."
Thank you for writing, Xuesi. Here are a few bits of more serious comments, given in the hope that they can be of help. I wish you good luck in your upcoming exams.
I don't know how Civil Engineering can be perceived as an obstacle to English studies. Civil Engineering seems a fine subject to major in. I don't understand why you should "change" to English. If you think giving one major up will help you with another, you can forget it. It won't.
Civil Engineering is perhaps even better paying than English to begin with. Knowing the monetary ambitions of the young in general, I don't want to see you struggle financially in the first years of your career, if you mean to tamper with the English language in earnest.
At any rate, Civil Engineering should not be held as something against your attempt at mastering the English language, or any other skill for that matter. It may be a good excuse to make, but as excuses go, even the best excuse is not good enough.
Also, learning English with an aim at passing an exam is different from attempting to master it at the street level, which enables you to communicate effectively without the strictures of grammar.
While grammar is necessary, at school it is often taught as the expense of fundamentals. The fundamentals are the natural process of language learning, as observable in babies learning their mother tongue.
Babies learn through imitation, through listening and then speaking out what they hear. They are not bothered about reading and writing until much later, at which time they are already fluent with the spoken language.
At our school, English is taught something like the other way round, with the emphasis squarely put on reading and writing.
I know what you're saying: I'm not a baby, and English is not my mother tongue. You can learn the ways of a baby; you've been a baby before. Likewise, you can learn to treat a foreign language like it is a mother tongue. It's no crime doing that.
Tiresome excuses aside, the thing with schools is that may produce people who can fill out a space nicely by picking out a correct answer for a question, but the same people may not be able to get back to their hotel room in time without considerable difficulty when they travel abroad. This is not an exaggeration - I've seen it happen.
So therefore, now that you've gotten some considerable English education under your belt, you might want to get back to the basics again. Be fluent with the easy, and you'll find less trouble with what others consider difficult, postgraduate exams included.
As for the exams, they are what they are. They may let you pass the door, but they can't guarantee you any success later on. I think you'll understand this, having passed exams at various levels yourself and yet still finding English confusing. It's the same with me and everyone else (I made this up so that I may sound really comforting).
By the way, this is not a knock at teachers and schools, ok? Let me make this clear, because there already are too many ungrateful pupils milling around. Any problem is with the pupil, not the teacher. Any problem is with the individual, rather than the system. Ask any successful student, and they'll prove it to you.
To a great degree, language like any other skills, can not be taught, but can be learned. I think this is partially the reason why you write to me rather than to Xin Dong Fang, the school that is crammed with exam experts.
At this point in time, crash courses are exactly what you are looking for because you have exams coming up soon.
What I'm suggesting is, perhaps you don't have to go to school again to do it. After going through all the exams to complete college, perhaps you want to re-think the whole thing over.
The whole logic needs a rethink. It's easy to prepare for exams and pass the door. But it's hard to stay in the room. I think what you're really looking for at present is to be able to not only pass a door, but advance into the living room, sit down and stay comfortably in it.
Now that you've graduated from university, you want to be able to make a living out of your major rather than just be able to say that I am a major in this and that. Aside of talking the talk, you want to be walking the walk, and walking well without wobble.
You've got interest, if I can trust you at your word. That's a major obstacle cleared away. With interest, there's little obstacle left, the least of all being a major in Civil Engineering. You can learn English while being a competent civil engineer at work.
The opposite way of thinking being of course: if I don't study in a school, I won't get a diploma. Diploma. That's the beginning of all their troubles. If one diploma doesn't work, they make up for it by acquiring for another. Understandably for the postdoctoral, there seems no end.
If you want to study English full time as a postgraduate, that's fine too. But don't give up Civil Engineering. If you think giving it up will help your English. It won't. It will, of course, very likely help you forget everything you have learned in Civil Engineering all the more quickly - and that's some way to pay back your teachers who have gone through the trouble with you in the first place, isn't it?
If I were you, I wouldn't mind about French for the time being either - it won't have helped your English much by the time postgraduate exams comes about.
On the other hand, you can master all three subjects if you put your mind to it. But that will be beyond the judgment of any schools.
Best wishes to you and all.
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