Today, I sent my son to study English twice. In the morning, he attended the Children Four Star English course which has totally 14 lessons which are all arranged in Saturday. This week is his last lesson. At night he attended an English Salon activity called “Vesting Los Angels”. There are about 20 primary school students attending this activity and both presider and teacher are foreigners.

Four Star English course and Salon activity are all designed for children under 11 years, but its difficulty level is not low. They require large vocabulary and quick response to quick speak speed. There is little difference between the way foreign teacher speak in classroom with the way they speak in their daily chat. And my son seems to get used to it. Besides, I often find some unfamiliar words in his books and have to check the dictionary in order to teach him. Feeling surprised at the beginning, I gradually find that helping him with English study is also a good way for me to improve my English.

Try to imagine the situation a decade later: almost every young people in the street can speak good English and having strong English ability show less and less advantage than before. And language becomes a tool in the true sense. I have been to a several European countries and find that having the ability to speak several languages is very common there. Maybe in a family, mother is from Belgium, father is from Holland and their neighbors are Austrians or Italian. European people begin to learn foreign languages from the very early age and bilingual study or trilingual study is relative easy for them is because some language such as English, German, Italian are belong to the same language family which are totally different from Chinese. But for us, studying one foreign language as English will cost a lot of energy.

But anyhow, I think we should study English very hard otherwise we will easily be obsoleted by the competitive society. Success comes from perseverance and effort.