BECAUSE OF NINA

If not for Nina I didn’t even know the Fluency. If not for Nina I wouldn’t be here today. I still remembered the day I stepped into this room. I was so surprised that all of you could speak so fluently and had such confidence. It attracted me immediately. Course I became a formal member later. What I thought was ‘someday I can be as good as you are. But soon I realized that English was no longer my best friend. My first table topic experience has told me that. It was such a disaster I couldn’t believe that my tongue was stunk, my mind was blank and I just stood there with only three years old wisdom. I felt the sympathetic looks shooting straightly at me like knives. Embarrassment is not enough to describe my feeling. With the extreme depression I went back home and told my husband my setback. He gave me a warm hug and said ‘No matter how poor your English ability is, there is one thing can be sure that I will always stand by you.’ I felt better but still hurt. That made me wonders if I should take the challenge or go back to my peaceful shelter.

One day in an occasional chat with my friend, we were talking about travel adventure. A friend said once she went to Australia with her husband. In order to celebrate their wedding anniversary they went out to buy some wine. Her husband intended to ask the clerk to pull out the cork(軟木塞) of the bottle for them. But he forgot how to say it at that time. So he hesitated and suggested ‘Why don’t we just buy some beer for instead’. She disagreed. Without thinking she took the money and wine to the clerk and said ‘Please, open it.’  Guess what? She made it. She used the simplest English to solve the problem. Isn’t it incredible? You know her husband is much better than her in English. Only one word forgotten by him that made her achieved the task, not her husband. And then another friend told me how she dealt with her language problem. She said once in the airport the check-in officer had some different opinions of her hand-carried luggage. But she insisted to defend her own rights. They had some argument. The officer seemed to blame that she was not capable to understand what he said. She felt she was insulted. She asked the officer ‘Do you speak Chinese?’ He was confused and said ‘No’. She told him proudly ‘See, you don’t speak Chinese well just as I don’t speak English well, so we are equal’. Surely she got what she wanted at last. Their stories encouraged me. Why should I hesitate? Why should I care about what people think of me? There is nothing to do with my ability. It is all about my altitude. “If I give up now I would never know what will happen”. I heard a voice from my heart whispering ‘Just to do it.’  

When facing the challenge, only determination is not enough. I try to find my memory of English back. Nevertheless, after more than ten years ignorance and absence of English, how to fill up the gap is a tough work. My life is changing gradually. The shopping time is less and less, and the study time is more and more. I begin to read English book. I pay attention to listening again. I feel great, especially when I get some improvement. I know I am still far away from fluency. At least I have taken the first step though. This step may make the impossible to be possible. Maybe someday I will be the champion of table topic like Emily is. Who knows?