Dear professor CC,
Taiwan, my hometown, is an isolated island country which is located on the Western Pacific. The residents in Taiwan have been trading with other regions since the age of Discovery. In order to trade with the foreigners, it was a requirement for the residents in Taiwan to learn foreign languages from the ancient times to nowadays. Owing to the capability of the speaking multiple languages is getting more and more important, my parents tried to teach me some basic English words when I was in the kindergarten. For instance, the word “mom” “dad” and “happy”….etc. In spite of the fact that I was unable to comprehend the meaning of those words, my parents still managed to teach me more words. Not until I was a first grader did I receive orthodox education of English. I was sent to Sesame Street, one of the well-known cram schools in Taiwan. During the period of time in the Sesame Street was delightful because the class was usually full of different games so that we could learn English and play games at the same time. However, i was transferred to another cram school called ACES, which is famous for its strict teacher and solid courses. My interest toward English suddenly vanished, and going to English cram school was a torture for me. I was on the verge of giving up learning English, however, one of the classmates in that cram school saved me from giving up. He suggested me to listen to Justin Bieber ( he was like a rookie in the music industry at that time) ,and watch the video clips of Smosh( one of the greatest video producer at that time on Youtube ). I was fascinated by how catchy the songs of Justin were, and how hilarious the videos of Smosh were. It was those songs and videos that inspired me to keep on learning English, and enjoyed myself in an English-only environment . Since I enjoyed myself learning English in almost every extracurricular activites, I passed every mid-terms and Finals with flying colors since Junior high school. I began to be confident to my English ability so I kept on reading more books in English so a virtuous circle was formed gradually, and that was the motivation to go to English department.
I chose to learn Cantonese in this semester because I figured out that Hong Kong is quite near to Taiwan so that we might have a lot of chances to pay a visit to Hong Kong. Moreover, Hong Kong Movies always attracts me but i couldn’t understand what they are talking about. In addition, the grammar of Cantonese is quite similar to the grammar of Mandarin Chinese Last but not least, Cantonese and the Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan shares the same Chinese characters, which is traditional Chinese characters. This reason makes me think that learning Cantonese might be easier comparing to those languages that has completely different characters, for example, Arabic or Korean. The four reasons above made me want to learn Cantonese.