Me, Speak, English

Chinastic interviewed me by phone two weeks ago and now the whole interview is on their website. I felt quite relaxed about that interview as the person who called me was Hailey Xie. I've been reading her blog for long time and we'd already had some email contacts before; so when she asked me if I would like to take their interview in English I said yes immediately.

Speaking English isn't always easy for me, I started to write my English blog since 2002(see article) but at that time I was afraid of speaking. I wanted to speak good English but I was too shy to even open my mouth. When I first went to Southeast Asia in 2003, my spoken English was quite bad, and I always tried to shy away from other travelers who wanted to talk to me. Actually I like meeting people but I was too unconfident with my English. Last summer I went to Europe for three months, and finally I got over my shyness. What I learned from that trip is it's OK to speak English with an accent, it's OK to make mistakes. Before I thought too much about speaking perfect English, I was afraid of being judged and I wanted to sound like a native-speaker which is stupid. My spoken English improved a lot in my last trip, I traveled with several people over seven months, and most of them are not from English-speaking countries. Now I totally feel comfortable with my English, it's not perfect, far from it, but I've accepted the way I speak-- I speak with my own accent, I make mistakes all the time, sometimes I can't pronounce words right, but it's OK, people understand what I'm saying most of the time, and I'm still improving.

Hailey emailed me five major questions the night before she called me, but I was busy with some other things so I didn't really get prepared. I thought she'd just write an article after the interview so it doesn't matter how fluent my English is. When the call came, I got quite excited to hear Hailey's voice on the phone, her English is very good, and I felt like I was talking to a friend.

Two days ago Hailey told me that article was coming out and she asked if it's ok to put the audio interview on the Internet. I knew our conversation was recorded, but I didn't expect they'd put everything online; if I knew, I could have prepared much more, after all my English isn't that good. Before I clicked that interview link (listen to it) I was totally unsure-- how would I sound like? I must have made lots of mistakes, will it be terrible?

Then I opened the link, while listening to the interview, there was a big smile on my face. Hey, it's so me! Surely I made mistakes, now I can find them out easily, but it doesn't really matter, I made my points clear. And that's my real English level, I'm not a CCTV 9 reporter or interpreter, I shouldn't worry too much about mistakes. When that audio was playing, my grandma came to my room asking, ''Is that you?!?" She didn't know anything about English, but she could tell it was me speaking very easily. I sounded overexcited sometimes, but it's also quite me, that's the way I talk, that's my personality. Now I think it's actually a good thing that I didn't prepare much for that interview, so I could just be natural and relaxed. This is my first time to hear myself speaking English, and it's not too bad. After I come back to China, I don't speak English that often now, but I'm still using it everyday, like reading English books, websites; writing blog, emailes; watching movies, TV in English...I'm still learning, day by day.