English and Me (+ #BookishScene Link Up)

I have been meaning to write a ’20 Random Facts About Me’ post for a while now, but I realise that it is not something you can write in one sitting. I tried to write it a few days ago but after a while, I only managed to write 3 random facts about me. So I decided to postpone it until I remember the facts randomly. Haha

Fact #1 on my list goes like “English is not my first language. It is not even my second nor my third language.” It dawned on me that I have never actually written a post about this particular topic and then I thought “Perhaps it will be interesting!”

In my country’s ever-changing curriculum, English is not a compulsory subject until middle school. However, a lot of elementary schools, especially those in big cities like Bandung, add English as its local content. I started getting English in fourth grade. I still remember the first lesson. It was spelling. The teacher was a beautiful young student teacher called Miss Naning. After the first few lessons, she gave us a spelling test and promised to give a prize for someone who got the highest score. It was me! I got 100 and she wrote “Congratulations!” on the corner of the page. It wasn’t until years later that I knew what the word meant, LOL! Anyway, she gave me the prize and it was a pack of snack bar. I was so happy back then. The test result and the prize were what made me fall in love with English. I excelled my classmates in English classes all the way through my school years. I was the walking English dictionary in high school. My friends often turned to me and asked what particular words meant and I would help them with English homework.

And then it came the time to choose my major for uni. I had always wanted to be a teacher. Combining that with my love for English, I decided to choose English Education as my major. I learnt a lot of new things about English language in my courses. I became so into grammar and loved correcting other people’s grammar. I became a ‘grammar police’ in no time.

Can’t believe Samsung have this grammatical error on their website 🙁

I had no idea that being enchanted by English grammar could be frustating, though. People in my country often use incorrect English and it keeps giving me headaches. It gives me itches I can’t really scratch. It also makes me look like a jerk who can’t stop criticising people for using incorrect English. But I can’t just shut up seeing people misusing the language I really like. It’s not only once that people accuse me of being a traitor of my own country and nationality because of my love for English. Haha! People can be mean like that :p

All those things set aside, my English is still far from perfect, though. I’m just an outsider of the language after all. Just another grammar nazi on the Internet. This is actually one of the reasons why I started blogging. I want to perfect my English while making friends with people from all around the world. You guys have helped me improve my English. Thank you so much! And pardon me if several things on my blog get lost in translation. I really hope I’ve never written something too odd or offensive. Haha!

This week I’m joining Georgie‘s and Josephine‘s Bookish Scene link up. The theme for this week is “bookshelf”. My bookshelf currently only has several books because I haven’t brought all of my collections from my parents’ house. As you can see, out of the fifteen books on my shelf, only two books are in my native language. The rest is in English. One book is actually a grammar exercise book. See? I’m sooo in love with English!

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