I feel sad and guilty because I have never taken the pain to learn English in school or in college. I am not a Native speaker, and English has always been my second language. Besides English, I know 5 other languages Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam. I am proficient in Tamil and Kannada, Moderate in Telugu and Hindi, and I speak very little Malayalam. I can write and read Kannada and Hindi. I believe that my linguistic skills are not great and I need to upgrade it. To start with, I would like to learn English. English is not my forte and I am not confident with it. For the namesake, I was schooled in English medium, hardly I saw anyone communicate in English. Till 12th grade or pre-universities as it is called in my state, I conversed in local language Kannada, the official language of Karnataka state in south India.
I studied in one of the prestigious colleges in Bangalore; run by catholic missionary. The campus was the first exposure to brush up my knowledge about the language. The pupil who studied with me came from different parts of India and some from abroad. The only language that they communicated with me is English. I tried my best; all I remember is how people corrected my English often. I did feel out of place, but I was in spirits to learn. I was a carefree student, I asked way too many questions and it never materialized in my scorecard. Even to this day, my Chemistry professor remembers me as someone who asked a lot of questions, and never met the expectations. Okay, I forgot to mention that my sister was an alumnus, and was notoriously famous for her intelligence. She was the youngest chemistry student who passed UGC exam with 4th rank in all India level and the only female to pass. She stills holds that record even after 20 years!! So, the expectations were very high. So, it was big disappointment for everyone.
I studied English for the first two years along with my major that is Chemistry, Physics and Math. And in English I always got the grace marks i.e., 35 out of 100! My scores did affect the aggregate percentage. In college, my English improved at super snail speed! By final year, I started using Dictionary.
There were many campus interviews; I never shy away from these interviews. I attended all with the same spirit, however I was never selected. I did feel Jealous when others got job, and I did not. I started looking for a job outside. I managed to get a job at AOL, however I was fired a month later. A tiff with the trainer and lack of my comprehension skills (READ ENGLISH) during live calls did the damage for me! After I was fired from AOL, I was all hurt. I still vividly remember how I locked myself up in the room and cried my heart out. It was a humiliating moment for me. I was so mad at my trainer; all I did for a day or two was cry. Then I made a decision that I will try again and ensure I have many offer letters in hand. I was aggressive in my job search, and on one day I had 4 or 5 offer letters in my hand. I randomly picket HTML, I just worked for a day and I simply hated the environment. The place gave me a melancholy effect and next thing I knew was I was out! Offer letter from Dell was very attractive. I loved the place and the environment was wonderful. I actually learnt my English there. So, whatever little English I speak is all from my work experiences!!
Although, I live in Canada, I hardly have any friends here. I still believe that I have a lot to learn. I believe I am very poor in writing and in order to improve I have started taking part in online discussions. Huffington Post is a great plat form to begin with. I identify myself as someone who is a social liberal and financially conservative. I voice my opinion in my own style. I am struggling with grammatical errors, punctuations and spelling mistakes. I do not know a lot of words; I always look up in the dictionary. I feel very helpless, and insecure when people write crystal clear sentences. And the choice of words they use to refute is simply remarkable. They have such good command over the language I often go green. I do not know weather it is their ability to pen down their thoughts eloquently or is the proficiency of the language that makes them looks so good? I do not know. All I know is I repeat a lot of words, my sentences are clichéd and hard to understand. I do not even know a lot of idioms; I feel so inferior right now! If I am allowed to sum-up how I feel, here it is ‘empty vessels make more noise’. I consider myself as an empty vessel!
I am obsessed with Flesch English Test. My average Flesh Reading Ease is 70.8 and a Flesch-Kincaid grade level is 6.6. That means my writing can be understood by graduates and above. Which is another depressing find! I want every one to understand my English! Wish I could make this blog interactive so that I talk to people and they can help me with the language.
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