I never thought that I would come to the United States…

– Jason Meng, China

Jason never thought his life’s path would lead him to the United States, but it did and he is doing everything he can to learn the language.

I started to learn English when I was 12 years old. At that time, I learned it as a course. Because it was a new language, it was quite difficult to learn, and I was rather fond of playing. Later because of my parents and the teacher’s teaching, as well as the pressure of the entrance exams, I had to work hard to go back over words and sentences.  Sometimes, I rewrote a word five times to help me remember it.  Sometimes, I reviewed a word by rewriting sentences ten or twenty times with that word. In my own unremitting effort, I finally earned a satisfactory score; a score of 100 points on an examination paper can take an examination up to 80 or 90 points, or an even higher score.

I never thought that I would come to the United States one day, but because my wife came here as a visiting scholar, I had to quit my job to accompany my young children. When I was in China, I thought my English was quite good, but when I came here, I found that my English is very poor, and I made grammatical mistakes in conversations with others. I did not know what words and sentences to use to communicate, and my vocabulary was insufficient, so I could not understand what others said, which was very embarrassing! Therefore, I will continue to study English hard through the East Central College English as Second Language (ESL) class, and my vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills will be greatly improved!