I have experienced the excitement and frustration of learning a foreign language ever since I was a small child. Although I was born in America, I used to take annual trips to my parents’ birthplaces in China. Learning Chinese was thus a necessity for me: not only to communicate with my numerous relatives in China, but also to easier communicate with my own parents. As I grew older and had more practice with Chinese, the language barrier gradually became less of a problem, but an informal education has its limits, especially concerning a language. To this day, I can speak Chinese but am unable to read or write. English proved much less difficult to master; especially considering that I live in a country where the primary language is English, and I have had continued access to a formal education on the language. Then, in seventh grade I embarked on yet another challenge: Spanish. This, of course, was not entirely unique: students in my grade and younger are required to take a school-based foreign language. It certainly felt unique to me, however, simply because these three languages are so different. The learning process for these languages has been annoying at times, but also immensely rewarding in many ways.
Here is an interesting link about U.S. Diplomats and their mandatory experiences of learning a foreign language: http://www.fluentin3months.com/diplomat/
Here is an interesting link about U.S. Diplomats and their mandatory experiences of learning a foreign language: http://www.fluentin3months.com/diplomat/