A misplaced opportunity

GEM was cancelled today, I'm not sure whether I should be glad for the extra time or disappointed for having missed such a wonderful workshop, even if it's only 1 session. My schoolwork seems to always accumulate in an endless mountain-like pile waiting for me to complete. On the other hand, GEM has also become an outlet of enjoyment for me, a way to destress.

Well, I just finished reading a novel called "Come Back To Me", a romance novel, actually. It's set around the 5th-6th century, involving the Norse and the Saxons. What happens here is that 3 couples were wedded among unhappiness initially, because their marriages were between the Norse and Saxons in order to attain peace between the two groups. The first two marriages had gone smoothly, and the couples now live in bliss despite the fact that they were forced into it at the beginning. Only the last marriage between Dragon and Rycca remains, their journey to marital happiness was one fraught with turbulence and plots against them. And generally, the story is about their love.

So what am I talking about here? I'm talking about 'Reading'. Although I've used a fictional novel as an example, reading as a whole is extremely effective in improving our language abilities. So I've found out. You can trust the teachers' words when they tell you read more. Or if you cannot bring yourself to believe a teacher due to some unknown inner psychological mechanism, you have my word on it. From Enid Blyton and Dr. Suess in Primary 1 to Andy McNab and Matthew Reilly in my Secondary School days. Or from 'Talking Science' (it's a science magazine for little children) to Reader's Digest and the newspapers, reading has always been an inseperable part of me. To me, it doesn't make any difference for novels, or magazines (No FHM or Playboy for me, I'm serious!).

While reading articles on the net or the papers enable you to gain knowledge, novels bestow upon you the ability to escape into another world vastly different from ours, and thus everyone should make reading a daily activity. In fact, whenever I'm whiling away my time waiting for someone or anything to that effect, I just grab any reading material I can find and start poring through it.

Since GEM is about speaking good English, I do suppose reading would help greatly in that aspect. Tonight, I gaze upon the stars, and see the worlds of many others. Among them, I see myself, book in hand, reading while enjoying the cool autumn breeze which ever continues to flip the pages of my life for me...

English Teachers

Like all teachers, they only want the best for us. Math teachers force us to practice more so that we familiarise ourselves with the questions, geography teachers try to use imagery as much as possible so that we can better comprehend the complex works of Nature. How about English teachers? Many of my classmates perceive English as a boring language, mayhap because the teachers in these lessons often rattle on about something which sounds insignificant such as grammar, sentence structure, and report formats. The importance of language is what sets up apart from being mere apes, and the fact that we are far more sophisticated than the monkeys is due to our ability to communicate specifically. Moreover, our IQ level has been proven to have actually lost to the monkeys.

Note the term, 'communicate specifically'. Not just a grouping of weird '00-hs' and 'e-kks'. Therefore, grammar remains a significant factor in conveying our message to others clearly. Hmm, do I need to remind all of you about the importance of adhering to grammar rules by using the video from my previous post as an example? Maybe a new reminder is needed... I just sourced this out, more focused on just humour itself, but useful as a reminder nonetheless. Haha!



Well, that being said, it's really not the theory part of languages that attracts me. This word may sound a bit far-fetched, but 'Passion' is the thing you need to keep your interest up. I got this idea from Mrs Julia Raj, who commented that I wrote with passion after reading one of my literature assignments back in Secondary 2. Hah, see the awesomeness of English teachers now? They're not just some scarecrow standing in front of the whiteboard babbling stuff which not many understand. The power of languages is...infinite.