When I saw my student losing confidence in himself, telling me he would never do well in English, I told him ‘When I was your age, I was worse than you.’ ‘You are lying! You are tutoring me English now, how would you be worse than me?’ He cried. Looking back, 8 year-old me could hardly utter a single word in English. Thanks to one humiliating experience, my life has been changed.
One day, my English teacher came into our classroom to promote an English study tour to Singapore. Eight-year-old me, who had never been to a foreign country, really wanted to join it, except my English was terrible. I did not know the meaning of any question words except ‘what’. I had no interest in English at all. All I wanted was to travel to Singapore and see the world outside of Hong Kong. I lied to my parents and said that I wanted to join the tour in order to improve my English. They were surprised, they could not believe their ears – their daughter wanted to improve her English? Looking back on this story, I am very thankful to my dad who wrote me a script to help me survive from the daunting interview during the selection round. Every night when my dad slept with me, he practiced the script with me again and again until I was asleep. ‘Remember la, you need to answer this when the teacher asks you this. Mui mui (little daughter) if the teacher asks you this, what do you answer?’
Time flew; when I was informed that my application to the study tour was successful, it was already a few months later. I was really excited about the tour.
What nobody knew was that I had also been practicing my Mandarin for months to ensure smooth communication there in Singapore. Speaking English? Nah, no way! No English, I'd rather die! I would just show everyone how fluent my Mandarin was, even though they called it ‘an English study tour’. After hours and hours of travelling, we arrived to a local elementary school there in Singapore. Everyone from Hong Kong was allocated to a group with 4 Singaporean students of different races, according to our respective English proficiency. When the pretty teacher showed me my group, I was stunned. I looked at my group mates and I could not help thinking ‘Wow thanks dad, umm, your script was a little too good.’ They put me into a group with four black students. I mean, it was my first time meeting black people, but I figured that they could not speak Mandarin. ‘Hello! What is your name?’ One of them asked me eagerly. ‘Er... Judy’ I muttered. I could not process what they were then saying. My brain was blank. I finally came to realize that where I was, everything I saw and heard were all totally unfamiliar. There was no turning back. I felt very uncomfortable. I was unconsciously sweating, shivering. I felt like my other classmates from Hong Kong were sitting miles away from me. I wished I could go back to Hong Kong right then and there.
Things could not have been worse at the ice-breaking session. We were called to stand up one by one to answer questions previously designed by the Singaporean students. ‘Okay, where is Judy?’ I stood up carefully as the teacher asked. The crowd was staring at me curiously. I was praying in my heart that I would not get a difficult question. ‘How do you eat?’ the teacher asked. ‘What?’ I thought without my mouth opening, but I supposed my face had shown how shocked I was when I heard the question. ‘Judy? How do you eat?’ ‘”By chopsticks” should I answer? What a weird question?! I am Chinese, many of them are also Chinese, don’t we eat the same way? Oh! Wait! Maybe they are asking me what my favorite food is?’ Tons of thoughts kept crossing in my mind and at the end, I chose to answer:
‘... Chicken.’
‘Excuse me?’ the teacher thought she’d heard it wrong. ‘Chicken.’ As loud as everyone in the classroom could hear, the students in the classroom responded me with a round of laughter, loud enough for everyone in other classrooms to hear. I could feel a wave of hotness rushing from my stomach to my head. I blushed like an apple, or a dragon fruit. The next second when I dragged myself out of my own world, when I first saw was the teacher’s puzzled face. Everyone was laughing like it was the funniest joke they had ever heard of.
‘Don’t speak English when you don’t even know English!’ a classmate from my school shouted that at me.
I felt very embarrassed but I was not ashamed. I did not regard not being good at English a problem. I only felt embarrassed because he insulted me in front of everyone.
At the end, the teacher reallocated me to another group with 4 Chinese students. They could all speak Cantonese fluently. I thought I would be glad, but I wasn’t. I knew I was reallocated for a reason. What my classmate said to me remained in my mind. I thought I would cry in front of the class, but I did not. In that moment, I promised myself that I would never let anyone say that to me again.
In fact, I cannot recall what I did to work on my English after that incident. I know I at least paid attention in class after that, but I did nothing else. Maybe that’s what people call ‘talent’? A latent gift granted by god?
My student heard my story and he started to say ‘Oh when I was in primary 3, I went to Singapore and I could not speak English...’ Well, I guess he thought I made up that story and I think he told his mom about it. I think they really didn't appreciate my story because later that month, his mom fired me.