Friday, January 18

My First English Teacher!

My formula:
Poor English + Chu Kang broken English + dictionary
=
better English than nothing

“Phua Chu Kang (PCK)...the best in Singapore and some say JB and Batam...hehehe.” Sounds familiar? Do you know this guy? I do! I guessed most of you out there knew him too! Want to know a secret that is not so secretive? He is actually my sub-English teacher. Well....kind of.

I am trying to improve my English from Phua Chu Kang’s style to better English. I have learnt lots from Phua Chu Kang (PCK) sitcom. Yes, I sincerely admit, PCK sitcom is one of my English referrals. I’m still in the learning process. It is not embarrassing to admit that I had learnt something from “The Most Popular Broken English Guy”.

I think this is just another way to learn. Sometimes, I watched English dramas (shows) but read the Malay translations at the bottom of the screen. What a waste, don’t you think? Yeah, I knew what the actors were talking about, but I definitely miss the actions! Too busy reading the translations! I understood Chu Kang’s dialogues even though broken English was used. There aren’t any Malay translations in PCK’s series. I tried my best to understand the dialogues somehow.

Sometimes, my English sounds like Chu Kang’s. The slang too! My working environment may be the cause of it. Most of my colleagues are Chinese.

I am not promoting Singapore’s English TV series and looking down at our local English series or others, but PCK was the first English sitcom that I watched without any Malay translations and it makes me laugh. I can’t remember which year PCK was broadcast in Malaysia, but I realized that PCK taught me how to speak English for the first time. It’s better than being shy to use the language, right?

I knew Broken English is not good to use. BUT, it is better than not knowing how to use or speak the language at all. Don’t you think so? Just like when we learn the Quran. We learn to listen, then recite, then read. Before some of us learn to write. Well, that’s how I learnt my Quran anyway....hehehe

My motto: Learn from mistakes. They always help!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

some of my favorite quotes:

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way. ~Marvin Minsky

People learn something every day, and a lot of times it's that what they learned the day before was wrong. ~Bill Vaughan

Rina said...

thanks for the quotes kanda.