Nelly Chen昭菁英語教學工作室-Nelly Chen's English Workshop

Q:Who is the best speaker of my native language??

A:I would like to say my mom is the best speaker to me.
Actually, my native language is Taiwanese. However, after I had started to study
in the elementary school and we were forced to speak Chinese at school
by government law. Thus, I speak Taiwanese at home and Chinese at school.
When I was in elementary school, once our teacher had us to prepare “crystal sugar”
and bring it to school. She spoke in Chinese but owing to my language deficiency (Chinese),
I listened to the similar sound “betel nut” in Taiwanese. Therefore,what I brought to school was “betel nut” instead of “ crystal sugar”.
That made me very embarrassing in class. And this joke did have me re-tell to my close
acquaintances again and again and make them hilarious.
Entering junior high school, my parents sent me to the private school to study and live at school dormitory.
I spoke Chinese from morning to night and which became my first language. Chinese has become the additive
language while my school day. Gradually, Taiwanese was getting to be subtractive. I found this phenomenon when I talked with my grandparents and parents. Before I didn’t know how serious problem for me to communicate them in Taiwanese. After that, I would try to listen to Taiwanese soap opera and songs as much as I could. Even Taiwanese is a language without written words. It borrows words from Chinese. At least, I can listen and speak Taiwanese fluently. I still speak with my mom in Taiwanese most of the time and code-switch Chinese back and forth.
And the most important is to communicate with the essential and significant person in my life-my dear mom.
Now my third language, English, will be my target language that I would like to master and function in the USA. How to keep these three language ability fluently is my concern and that’s also what we can garner from TESOL education.