My English Story

I am not a native of any country whose native language is English, yet I speak, write, and read English fluently without the slightest difficulty. What I am going to write here is how I developed theses skills over time.

English in School

I went to an English medium school and English was the mandatory first language for all students in my school. Everybody in the school had to speak English except during language classes, since it was an English medium school, right from the kindergarten level.

English on Weekends

The other advantage I had was, after school and on holidays, we could play in the school grounds where kids who wanted to play would gather there especially on the weekends. It was more fun than going to the movies or visiting friends or hanging out elsewhere and parents almost always let us go and play in school as they considered it to be the safest place for their children to be in after home. It was a win-win for both parents and children.




When we used to play in school, we always spoke English even though we had different mother tongues and understood each other's language. This was because having spoken to each other in English throughout the week in school, it felt awkward to speak to each other in a different language.

English Comes Home

Since my siblings also used to study in the same school, and we had to speak to each other in English, speaking English continued at at home too. This is how we brought English home. It was like we were surrounded on all sides by English and it seemed only natural for me. Of course, we didn't forget our native language and spoke it with friends, relatives, visitors, shopkeepers and others we came in contact with in our daily lives. No, we didn't speak perfect English nor did we worry about not speaking perfect English. We spoke broken English at times and slowly over time, proper English took over and we became better and better every day, so much so that today, I prefer communicating in English than my native language because I know English better than my native language.

English At Work

Being good in spoken English was a basic requirement to work in BPO's (call centers). I applied and was selected for training. This is where I learned about accents. Till then nobody had told me about accents and that there were different accents although I had watched English movies, listened to English music and I also regularly went to Church (again English). I thought that after training, I would be able to speak like all those cool actors in the movies and television, but was surprised to know that we were not going to be trained on American or British accents, although we would be working for American/British organizations. We were going to be trained in the "neutral accent." Neutral accent is an accent that can be understood by all English speaking people. We learnt phonetics, how to use the lips, tongue, the teeth, the soft palate and the hard palate (yes, we might not realize it but how we use these parts of the mouth is really important) and soon started talking calls from American customers. Trust me, it wasn't easy in the beginning; speaking is one thing but understanding an average American speaker who is least concerned about whether you understand or not can be very intimidating. Slowly but steadily, I improved my listening skills and soon I could sit back and relax and actually enjoy the conversation with these wonderful people and it was very satisfying to be able to resolve the problems of someone from the greatest country in the world. Americans love to talk and it was not always about the issue the customer was calling about, but there was also a lot of small talk, exchanging general information about our countries like weather, sports, places of interest and lifestyle. This also helped me learn a little bit about the country and its culture. Today, I can have decent conversation with any English speaker; over the phone, face to face, or through mail/chat.

This was my English story. What about you?

• What advantages and methods that I shared can be implemented in your English Learning.
• Did you have the advantages that I did?
• What are the advantages that I have that you don't have?
• What are the advantages/resources that you have but are not using them effectively.

I would love to see what you have to say about "My English Story" in the comments section.