I Speak English

My parents got me into the best school in the town and also one of the most costly schools in the town, which was St. Joseph’s School, Bettiah.

It was run by Christian missionaries, and they always promoted English as a language. We were instructed to speak in English on the school campus. Well, we didn’t do it as no one was there to check on us, but almost all of the classes were conducted in English, and the sisters also gave their talks in English.

I could always understand them, but speaking English was out of my hands.

In 5th grade, there was a sister, Divya, who taught us English, and she was one of my favourites. Every Saturday, she had one class where all of the students read English books, and it is safe to say that it helped a lot. It was like a weekly reading class for us and we used to compete against each other to speak more sentences without an error.

When I got out of the school after class 5th and went to the Assembly of God Church School, Bettiah, here, the environment wasn’t supportive of promoting English. 

The teachers here were also least interested in speaking English. Only the principal and senior teachers spoke in English.

Here, I didn’t see any considerable growth in terms of my English-speaking skills.

The next chapter starts when I got out of school after 10th grade. In 11th grade, I regularly recorded myself talking about my day in English. It used to be a 3-5 minute video, but when I compared the after and before after a year, I saw the incredible results.

 I also used Omegle to connect with strangers and talk in English. It was difficult to find someone but it too helped me.

At the same time, I used to randomly talk to myself in solidarity about random stuff.

All these were good then I joined a travel marketplace startup Buddy.

In Buddy, most of the people were from South India, even the founder, and the only two people who joined before me were also South Indians.. So, here, it became absolutely vital to talk in English because there simply was no other way. 

Here, I must admit the help from Charu( my co-worker ) I got. We used to talk for hours and talk about random things after the meetings got over. She was the one, because of which I became confident talking to anyone in English.

For the reason that she was from South India, she knew better English than me, and at last, she was a girl, and for me as a shy boy, talking to a girl gave me huge boosts of confidence. Also, after I came into a relationship on December 29, 2023, which ended after 27 days, I used to talk to the girl for hours. At my peak, I talked for a continuous 7 hours. I know what I talked was total crap, and I feel like slapping myself when I remember what I talked , but still, I talked in English, and it was good for me.

This was my story about how I learnt English.

Thanks for reading.

This is Navneet signing off from today’s blog.

Peace 🕊️