How I Started to Learn English

Ke Xu
Ke Xu
I started to learn English in 1974. The Cultural Revolution was not over yet, but the political control by the "Gang of Four", the radical leaders including Mao's wife Jiang Qing, had loosened up their control a little as the result of the resistance from its opposition side represented by the Premier Zhou En Lai. This was also the period when Deng Xiaoping was put back to power position to rescue the country's failing economy. It was this year that my hometown, Jiangsu Province, started a radio program teaching English. I was staying home at that time waiting to be assigned a place in the countryside to go to receive my "re-education". So I decided to seize the opportunity and therefore started to learn English. I was originally interested in English when I was in high school although I didn't learn much English then. By the time I started to learn English, the only book available to me was the textbook for the radio program. Since the first day I started to learn English, I got strong support from my parents. Every time my dad went on a business trip to a big city, he would search the bookstores for anything that would help me. I still remember the excitement I had when my dad brought back an English-Chinese dictionary from his business trip to Beijing. Their salary was not high, but they never hesitated to spend money on books and dictionaries.

One year later, I went to the countryside to work with the farmers. I was less than 18 then and had never worked in the fields before. The villagers were very nice and friendly to me and took good care of me. But even so, I still had to work 10 hours a day in the fields. After work, when other people went home, I had to ride bicycle for about an hour to get home. I was so tired that I often threw myself into the bed and would fall into sleep the next minute. The radio English program usually started at 10:30 or 11:00 at night. When the broadcast time came, I could hardly open my eyes. Many times, I almost wanted to give up. But my parents told me not to. "You have already been doing this for more than a year. Giving up now means to give up what you have tried so hard all the time to achieve," my dad said. So I stuck to it and didn't give up. I don't know how long I could hold up without my parents' support. At that time we didn't have anything like a tape recorder yet, so I had no choice but to follow the radio broadcast schedules.With extremely limited resources, it was very hard to learn English all by myself without being able to talk to anyone in English. I read the text aloud after the teachers again and again, trying to pick up the correct pronunciation and intonation. To get more exposure to English, I sometimes had to listen to the same broadcast twice from two different radio channels at two different time. The pronunciation and intonation of the two teachers, a male and a female, was the only source for my imitation. I did all the exercises in the book with the little grammar knowledge I learned from the two teachers, and then checked the answers with the teacher.

After I was transferred to work in the Village Administration Office, things made a turn for the better. I had more time to work on my lessons. I had a small room in the Office so that I no longer had to ride bicycle home every night. The Office had a very nice radio-amplifier (meant for the purpose of amplifiying when the Office held big mass rally or broadcasting) which I could use for my study. It was from this time that I began to secretly listen to VOA (Voice of America). For the first time in my life I finally heard authentic English which was spoken by native speakers. I was thrilled by this change. I began to see hope and felt greatly encouraged. At that time iwas ilegal to listen to broadcasting from a capitalist country, not to say America, the number one enemy country of China. I could go to jail, or even ruin my family if I had been caught for doing that. The political risk was obvious. But I couldn't help myself as if I were drawn by a hidden force. I was fortunate to have a very understanding boss, Mr Chen, the Party secretary of the village. Despite of the risk to get himself involved, he turned a deaf ear to someone's report that I might be using the Office radio listening to radio broadcast from foreign country, asking them for the proof. "How do you know it was foreign broadcast he was llistening to? Do you speak Egnlish? That was Radio Beijing's international broadcast, you fool. Don't make a fuss as if you know what you are saying". I was so grateful to him when I heard about this. He was protecting me. Being a very promising high school gradate himself, his dream to go to college was smashed by the Cultural Revolution. "I have long lost my hope of going to college, now that I am married with three kids and this job that keeps me busy with all these stupid things we are doing" he spoke to me in private, "but you haven't. You still have the hope. Keep going, and don't let anything stop you." The great support he gave me in my study of English joined that from my parents to become the major source of encouragement to me. I worked harder at my English and my pronounciation intonation also improved as the result of listening to VOA and BBC.

One thing that happened accidentally gave me a chance to see my own achievement and let me tasted what it was to succeed. The principal of the village school, which was located next to the Village Office one day came to me and asked me for a foavor. The English teacher of the school was giving birth to a baby and they needed a substitute to teacher English. "Me?" I doubted myself. "But I have never taught before!" I told the principal. "Why not?" said the Party secretary. "Nobody knows how to do things the first time he does it. why don't you give it a try. This is the best way to find out how well you learned your English?" "Sure you can do it!" Agreed the principal." The kids let out a cry of surprise when I walked into their classroom. "Hey, what's going on? what is this Office boy doing here? Where is our English teacher?" I cleared my throat, and greeted the class in English "Good morning, boys and girls," the class quieted down right away. That first sentence of English was the first one I had ever used for real communication purpose. That must have surprised the kids. "Wow, he sounded like the man in the radio!" I heard soomeone commented. The class went very smoothly. It was a success, to be exact, since I heard later that the kids were asking about me when their English teacher came back. A Chinese teacher who had only had a summer training at township level before becoming a part-time English teacher. That was the first class I taught. The start of my career as an English teacher. By the time I started to learn English, I had never expected that one day I could come to the United States, not to mention that I whould teach English here in New York city.

After the Cultural Revolution was over, all the colleges and universities were re-open and I was fortunate to enter the college to study English. Upon my graduation from the college, I was assigned a job at Nanjing to work as a researcher for the Department of Education of my home province - Jiangsu Province.

One day in 1990, a white-haired old man with a pair of thick glasses walked into my office to meet me for a discussion regarding the partnership betweeen Jiangsu TV station and Education Department in joinly sponsoring an English teaching TV program. I couldn't believe my ears when the old man introduced himself to me. He was no other person but one of the two teachers who taught me English over the radio in 1974! When I told him that I was one of his first batch of students learning English from him over the radio, the old man was moved to tears. "I never dreamed that only two months away rom my retirement, I could meet one of the earliest students I taught during the Cultural Revolution. I thought I was wasting my time then teaching English on the radio at a time when learning English was still running the risk of being accused of "treason".