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立 政 治 大 學
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Part II: Breaking Dawn
Craze for TV Series:
“I would watch CSI all day during the summer vacation before entering college.”
As Erin moved to college, her relationship with English was gradually changing for the better. This was all because of the American dramas she enjoyed on TV.
During the summer vacation after the college entrance exam, Erin started to watch CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, and other American TV series to kill time. When associating the experience with English learning, she affirmed that it dramatically helped to improve her listening comprehension and her perception of English. The turning point was the Chinese subtitles of the online TV shows:
I am telling you a funny thing. One time I was watching an episode, and the Chinese translation sucked, really sucked. I remember [in the episode] there was someone needed to be saved, and he needed oxygen, and the doctor asked the assistant aside, or the nurse, to give him nitric oxide, that is NO, but the
translation said “No, now” (laugh out loud). I think it’s ridiculous! Since then, I realized that I could not fully trust the Chinese translation, so I started to pay more attention to the translation if I found it strange.
Initially, when watching TV shows, she would usually read the Chinese subtitles first to know what the characters were saying, and then go back to see the acting. She would then watch the scene again to match the English sound, the
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meanings of the lines, and the acting parts. This process would take Erin 90 minutes or so to finish a 30-minute-long episode.
Erin’s love of American TV series prompted her to look for news, information, or songs related to the TV show. She mentioned that many enthusiastic fans would edit some of their favorite clips from different episodes into a short film and arrange a song for it. She liked to watch those films and enjoyed the songs. To understand what the songs were about, she searched for the English lyrics and sang with the songs.
Erin especially mentioned that she would not read the Chinese translation of the lyrics since she believed that there was definitely a discrepancy between the two languages:
It’s like you won’t translate Li Bai’s poems into English. It will be really weird.
So I don’t want to [read the Chinese translation of English lyrics]. I want to feel it.
While listening to English songs, Erin would look up the unknown words in the dictionary and this action gradually enlarged her vocabulary; however, she could not check the dictionary while watching TV shows because she did not know how to spell the word she heard, so she just listened to it. In fact, she did not intentionally train her listening comprehension via watching TV series. Her improvement on English
listening comprehension was simply the byproduct of her craze for TV shows, as she stated, “I did not deliberately train my listening comprehension. I just wanted to watch TV! I watched the shows because I loved to, not because I wanted to improve my English. For me, these are two different things.”
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Having a Taste of Success:
“I am awesome! I cannot believe I passed the English interview!”
Although Erin’s intention of watching English TV series was not to study English, the large amount of time she invested on those TV shows actually exposed herself to the language extensively. The result was not only her improvement on listening comprehension; more importantly, she felt that her overall English competence leveled up:
Let me tell you. If your listening comprehension improved, your English competence improves as well. […] The thing is that when you are listening to those characters talk, they would not just say a word, right? They must put words in sentences. So, if your listening comprehension improves, you will have a better sense of the language. Once you have a better sense of the language, your grammar will improve as well, and finally you will have a better grasp of the language. Besides, since you listen to English more often, you will find yourself less afraid of speaking the language.
English TV series acted as a catalyst for her English learning. With three to four-year’s experience of watching TV series, her attitude toward and perception of English changed sharply, and she even dared to apply for a part-time job as a teaching
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assistant (TA) in an English-only language school when she was a junior in college.
She believed that it was the experience of watching TV series that helped her pass the interview and get the job. In high school, she would rather die than open her mouth to speak English, but then, having received a great deal of listening input from TV shows, she regained confidence about her speaking ability. “At least I know what I say won’t be too ridiculous,” said she.
The job interview went better than she had imagined. As soon as the interview finished, Erin called everyone in her phonebook to brag about how good she was.
“Right then, I really thought that I was awesome! It is unbelievable that I could pass an English interview,” she cried.
Soon after, Erin set off on a journey in the language school working as a TA. Her job included marking children’s assignments, correcting students’ test sheets, and reviewing the key grammatical points for kids. She mentioned that she did not learn English well in secondary school. She could not spell many simple words, or she could not even recognize some of them. Since the children had vocabulary test every week and she needed to check their test performance, Erin repetitively see those words and gradually she was able to pick up these words:
“So, maybe the names of some vegetables and fruit…,” Erin laughed.
“Yap, I remember you said words like ‘cucumber,’ right? You asked me if I knew the word.”
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“Yes, words like ‘lettuce,’ ‘cucumber,’ and ‘cabbage.’ I learned those words with the kids.
Erin’s working experience in the language school was quite an important stage during her English learning process. In addition to picking up basic vocabulary with children, she also spoke frequently to English native speakers who also worked as teaching staff in the same language school. She did not deliberately learn the language, but she was consciously using the language, and she made a great progress in her English proficiency because of using the language.
Turning Over a New Leaf:
“Studying abroad was quite popular among psychology majors, and I started to think maybe I could go study abroad as well.”
Erin originally chose History as her major in college, but soon she found out that it was not the subject she wanted to explore. Later, she decided to take the transfer exam to study Psychology. To prepare for the exam, she signed up for a statistics course and an English course in a cram school:
I think the English teacher taught well. He probably knew that those who signed up for the English course in order to prepare for the transfer exam were
comparatively lower achievers, so he explained grammatical points in a way that was easy for me to understand. It was then that I started to have a better
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understanding of English grammar. Maybe it’s also because I became more mature so that I could have a better grasp of grammatical concepts. Plus, with his clear explanations, I found it not so difficult to answer those multiple choice questions.
However, Erin did not take the transfer exam eventually; she just transferred to another department, the Department of Psychology, in the original university.
Majoring in psychology, Erin needed to read many English textbooks. Also, she found most of the professors had studied abroad, and studying abroad was kind of a trend rather popular among psychology majors, which made her put studying abroad into consideration as a goal for the future.
Graduating from college, she once thought about going to Australia or New Zealand for working holiday, but in the end she made up her mind to pursue a
master’s degree in counseling in the U.K. To study in the U.K., she needed to take the IELTS test, and this time she chose to prepare the test by herself by doing sample tests. She took the test twice, scoring 6 out of the full mark 9 for the first time and 6.5, the second time, which allowed her to attend the graduate school right away, without the need to spend time in the language school first as many of the international students did. “I have never been away from home, so I really wanted to explore the world. I wanted to learn to live independently, and experience a different life from the one that I have had in Taipei,” Erin said in our first interview with excitement.
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Looking back, Erin’s whole English learning process in Taiwan is bittersweet.
Under formal education in secondary school, she hated English so much that she was reluctant to invest any time studying the subject. However, English TV series and the working experience in the language school accidentally opened a gate for her to the world of English, shortening the gap between her and the language. Finally, she even decided to go abroad for the pursuit of a master’s degree. Studying abroad was no doubt a new page of her life, and a brand-new journey was waiting for her.