After we read the article Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, I had a basic understanding of how she learned in English within the “Mother Tongue”.

However, my English learning story is different from her. Let’s talk about my background first. I originally come from China and went to high school in Hawaii for four years. The interesting and also difficult thing is that I did not know any other English words besides “Hello” when I first arrived in the U.S. It was a very hard time for me the first year I got to Hawaii, however, one good thing is that I did not have such a “Mother Tongue” on me, because I did not practice and have any background of English. This leads to the beginning of learning a new language from zero, but it does not mean that I didn’t or I don’t have an accent; I did, and I still do have an accent. However, the good thing is that I learn English from zero turns out that I could understand the concept of English from the basic, and as the time goes on, I learned new things to my life in English, such as surfing; I could not talk about surfing normally in Chinese, my first language, right now. All these experience, with my life in Hawaii, surrounded by almost no Chinese speaking people, leads to one of the hardest things to a lot of language learners, thinking in English. I now could think normally in English and also I have dreamed in English too.

My situation is not rare, but I think it is one of the coolest experience in my life that learned a new language from zero in an amazing place that speaks the language.