How I started learning English!!

A couple of days before a friend of mine attempted an English test. They struggled with it. So when I saw that test, I was comfortable with it. Because of all this, I remember how I started learning English. As i came from a town people didn’t use English for verbal communication, even in English medium schools. So the start of my journey to learning English was interesting.

When I was a kid aged 6-8, I found an old photocopied notes of English grammar, from which my mama used to study. From those notes, I used to read words then as I grew up; luckily, I never lost those notes (now I don’t know where it is). In those notes, tenses, verbs, and other fundamental topics were there. So I used to read them sometimes, as there was a Hindi translation for every English sentence. As I remember, I read a lot of past tense examples from those notes and then kept the notes somewhere safe.

According to the teachers, I was not a good kid as I was not good at studies and my written works in a notebook were incomplete, so they all used to punish me. When I was in class 4th, my English teacher took a test on English grammar; almost everyone in the class except one kid failed as they got less than 3.5 marks out of 10. And the teacher punished everyone by beating them with sticks on their hands. I was waiting for my turn for punishment when the teacher announced. I started looking at her. Then she told everyone that I scored three marks and she was not expecting it from me, and she said everyone should learn from me. After that test, she announced another test in two days. This was the first time I was ever praised for my writing skills, but I did not know how I did it as it naturally came into my mind, but I liked it. So when she took another test, these questions were based on tenses and a few questions of verbs. To solve this test, I flipped pages of my test copy and saw how I answered the question in this test. This time I scored 4.5 marks, and the teacher was happy, and I was also pleased that I scored the marks and the teacher appreciated me.

After I did not use to study much at home, I was not too fond of rote learning and mugging up answers; as we were taught in Hindi, I started writing answers. First, I asked the teacher what the Hindi meaning of the question was and then I would try to write the answer in broken English by translating Hindi to English. Initially, I wrote all my answers in past tense for a long period because that was the only tense I knew (because of the notes). XD!!. Then I met my new English teacher. She was so kind she told me “beta English me aur bhi tense hote heh”, which translates into son there are other tenses in the English language. When she taught it to us in class 6/7, I understood the tenses by then. So I used to write in a manner understandable by all my teachers. The teacher who praised me first time also taught us other subjects. She always motivated me to write answers on my own on the other hand. Other students used to write the answers, which were dictated to us by the teachers. She used to praise me in front of everyone; she would tell learn from shivam that he is writing answers in his way.

Then when i finished 8th class, I attended a summer camp at my school where a teacher taught me basic English grammar; where he used and introduced us to High School English Grammar and Composition Book by H. Martin and P. C. Wren. There I become confident in tense and some basic grammar. This was the first checkpoint in my journey. Then I changed my school as I was from MP Board school. I went to a hostel in a new CBSE board school. In my old school, I was the only one writing answers in his way. In this school, everyone was doing this. In the new school, I grew my skill as I was forced to communicate in English, and the teachers were also helpful.

So this is how I started my journey in learning English. Once I started, the journey of learning never ended. As of today, I am still trying to improve my English every day.