English is my first language at least that's what I am trying to tell myself since my college days. Even though I had been from an English medium school, my spoken English was pretty weak...and what I aspired to accomplish was really King English.
After schooling when we entered college I and my close friend realized that the kind of English our other classmates were speaking... we could not match their class, their level of communication was totally different...enhanced and polished and we on the contrary were struggling at basic day to day communication without using few supporting words from the local language. Forget about a decent vocabulary they used certain phrases which were totally new to us.... even though their conversation didn't have any difficult English words still we couldn't make sense out of it because we were not aware of those phrases.
We both realized that we in our schooling days had not paid enough attention on enhancing our language skills since we used to compare ourselves with vernacular medium students and feel great about ourselves that we can converse in English only to realize now that we were sailing in the same boat and we were struggling to understand as much as the vernacular medium students while learning from the professors and while socializing with other classmates who had come from different convent schools.
We decided that we take this setback seriously and do something to overcome it. We both did some research and came to the conclusion that we have to start with speaking to each other only and only in English, no matter what.
Thus I embarked on a journey to improve my language and went to the next level of starting to think in English. I had read it in an article - if you have to improve any language you need to start thinking in that language.... this definitely worked for me even though it took me a few years to achieve this feat.... I realized that I had come closer to achieve it once I recollected that I had woke up from a dream and I could remember bits and pieces of my dream and the narration of the recall of those parts in my mind was in pure English Language!
In the quest of improving my language I also figured out that Language improves Knowledge and Knowledge in turn helps you to build your language.... eventually Knowledge and Language become the Twin Towers of your Growth!
Both Language and Knowledge are dependent on each other and to enhance one you need to enhance the other as well in parallel
Further I learnt that to enhance any language that you are learning... you need to touch all the parts that comprise a language; namely:
1. Read 2. Write 3. Listen and 4. Speak
Of this above four aspects I was Reading quite a few books, I was Listening to English News channels and watching English Movies, Speaking to my friend in English and also trying to articulate on my own on topics that seemed difficult to me, however I figured a bit late that the Fourth aspect was largely Ignored.... Writing!
It had already been a decade and more and my journey of improving my language had come a long way. I had started way back in the year 1994, during the first year of college FYJC Science and I had worked hard on improving my vocabulary and there were few (not too many) words while reading random articles or news papers that were new to me or I couldn't guess the meaning of especially after reading the context, however this aspect (Writing) of the Language was totally left untouched and it was already too late now... say almost 16 years!
I decided that I need to catch up on this one and that it is never too late to start anything no matter how late this realization had occurred to me and this is how Blogging happened to me!
Blogging is an effort to enhance this fourth aspect of language - Writing!
You have to start somewhere and this thought kindled in my mind in the year 2010 when I used to work on the same floor as the creative team of 'Indigo Consulting'... a full service Digital Marketing Agency I used to work for during those days.
I had observed the creative team brainstorming over ideas for ad banners and marketing campaigns and I used to feel like suggesting them a word or too but shied out.
Their co-existence inspired me to try my hand on blogging and this is when I wrote my first few blog posts.
Writing an article or a blog post is definitely the most difficult aspect of the language as compared to speaking which is the second most difficult one. Even though it may seem as if writing is more easier than speaking its only when one really starts writing a small article when one realizes what all goes in to it and once you start developing this aspect of your language you start enjoying it's completeness.
I will continue writing more articles and blog post to harness this skill and if you are reading this paragraph right from the start of the article then I thank you for your patience to go through me entire article and I will love to have your feedback or comments to help me reinforce my skill and continue with my passion.... Thank you!
