Let me begin by giving a little introduction of myself. I came to Singapore at the age of 2 1/2 years. I remember clearly struggling my way through much of kindergarten and even primary school.  Back then, to me English was just another subject. I didn’t see the importance of English being an important tool of communication especially in a country like Singapore which is multi-racial; English is the only common language. Till about primary 3, I had difficulty forming proper sentences that were coherent. Then soon enough I realised that English was just not another subject but it was beautiful language that I had the opportunity to learn.

                            In secondary school my mediocre performance in English continued but by then I started to appreciate learning English. But I have to mention that the drilling in secondary school for English was pretty mundane with teachers constantly giving us weekly journals, countless grammar and vocabulary exercise. I should say that I didn’t exactly enjoy the way English was taught to me, as much emphasis was given to scoring well in the subject rather than learning and enjoying the subject. Especially in secondary 3 and 4, English periods were something I didn’t look forward to as teachers would come in give us compos, and drill us on countless comprehensions. Somehow I managed to slog my way through secondary school life and passed my O level English with a decent grade.

                                Finally, I reached my A levels where English was called general paper.  I was fortunate to have a non-local English teacher for the first time, who brought life into the very mundane lessons. We used to go to the school library during school time to read newspapers, which was a break during hectic JC life.  He used to teach English in a very different way in the sense that he didn’t emphasis so much on grades, rather on the various ways to learn the language. Sadly, though I passed GP, the grade was insufficient to be exempted from writing QET and thus I am here!

                                 But I do look forward to ES1102 lessons as I hope to learn as much as I can from this module! And being in FASS where I have to take some essay based modules I feel that the skills acquired will be applicable.

Pavithra 

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