I want to start this article with a statement: English is not as hard as we all might have thought. English is one of the easiest languages in the world. Even my tribal language is harder than English.
Formally, I stopped studying English after my high school. At that time, I did not have any interest to study English any further. Having a language program as main major in college, I believed, was a waste of time and energy. It was useless. A language shouldn’t be learned in a classroom. Instead, it should be practiced and spoken in our daily lives. So, I took philosophy as my major.
Since I took philosophy as my major, there was no way not to read books written in English. Most of western philosophers we learned, had their master pieces in English. I had no reason to avoid learning English. Though, I did not take an English course. I even did not buy any English dictionary until now. What I did was trying to figure out the main ideas of the books based on their context. Of course it was not always easy to figure it out as it had key words, which I had to know its exact meanings. In that case, I would use a friend of mine, who was very good in English, as my living dictionary.
As time went by, I became more fluent and familiar to English. I was so fortunate as my final paper was on the topic of an American Philosopher. I had to read different books discussing on the thought of this philosopher. I was lucky too because my supervised professor was an America’s graduated. He helped me a lot to correct my translations and grammars.
As I am writing this short article, I realized that English is not as that hard as many people might think. Two days ago I tried to prove that English is not hard by taking a TOEFL IBT preparation test. Most prestigious univerities acknowledge this IBT TOEFL. There is different kind of TOEFL test, called Paper Based Tes TOEFL, which is considered easier than the IBT. I downloaded a simulating IBT test form the internet. There were three tests, and each test consisted of reading part, listening part, writing part, and speaking part. I didn’t do the speaking part because I had no one to listen and to score me. Of these three courses, I had the highest score in listening part. I like this part since it covered different themes, from art and science to philosophy. I got 89%, 91%, and 79% respectively for listening part on test number 1, 2, and 3. For your information, I did not take any preparation at all for the three tests. And I finished every test half hour ahead than its normal time.
The same thing happened to reading part. I finished quickly and got the score above 70% for all three tests. I am sure that if I spent more time and concentrated more, the score would be much higher. I did not do the writing part, since the TOEFL program in my computer could not score me. That’s one reason why I am writing this article, that is to let all you readers to score me J.
I am not so worried about speaking, since I have been practicing it since my college years. As I mentioned earlier, I had a friend who was very good in English. I used to chat with him in English. Both of us had a commitment to speak English every time we had time to meet and communicate. After graduating from college, I also used to help some western tourists when they got lost or needed any information. All of them had no difficulties to understand me.
For the time being, my commitment is taking a real IBT TOEFL test as a requirement to apply for scholarship. I have a dream that one day I should go abroad and having my master degree there. Unfortunately, there is no institution in my island which is eligible to run the TOEFL test. I am living in a quite small island in East Nusa Tenggara Province. I am hoping that next year I would have chance to go to one of the big cities, and having my TOEFL test there. Hopefully.
