I've Hit My Ceiling? You Are Your Own Upper Bound!--How to Keep Learning A Second Language

In any case, I have to admit two facts:

• English is just my second language , to compete in such an international and multi-cultural environment, it is far from good enough.
• No matter how hard I try, I may never be able to pull up to those native speakers, when I say native speakers, I mean those Americans, British guys, Canadians, Australians, or even most of the well educated Singaporeans and Indians (Most Chinese guys ignore the fact that India inherited meritocracy education system from Britain, thus those who are able to afford the tuition fee can communicate and work with others in English better than the average Chinese, don't know how can we be so confident to mock their accent).

These two facts are like unchangeable theorems that I may never get a chance to prove them wrong, while it doesn't imply I should not try my best to approach the ceiling! English has been of great interest to me for years, and I have never stop improving since my junior year in college:

• Most of my Google RSS are in English (one of the major reason is I am really sick of the low quality and fickle Chinese media(both the online blogs and offline papers and magazines, the only two I am enjoying reading is Net-ease网易 and Zhihu知乎))
• I tried hard to pass the Business English Certification certified by Cambridge University with a Higher degree.
• I managed to get 3 8.0 points(4 in total) in IELTS.
• I have been a member and administrator of Economic China for years.

When I made up my mind to Singapore, I got several reasons:

• I can get scholarship which makes me more economical independent(which I am right now).
• Bilinguality can relatively be a strength (at lease not a con) in Singapore, at least your fluency in mandarin can make up to your weakness in English to some extent(which total depends on what kind of industry you want to jump in as I see now). While if you go to US or UK(I don't give a shit to Australia since there are already full of Chinese and you get bored, passive and less aggressive easily, and I also eliminated Hongkong since Cantonese is still the major living and even working language there), it will probably be very difficult for you to find a job other than computer related or dish washing(kidding, but it does has a narrow range of choices).
• Can go home quickly if there is any emergency.
• Food is good based on my travelling experience before.(On June)

All in all, Singapore is the best trade-off I can ever expect as my major concern is still 'working in that place for 3-5 years after graduation'.

Actually what is on the track is that 'I am walking my talk', I used all the connections I can at this stage and tried to find as much information as possible online and after doing some trade-offs, I am now working in Executive Coach International as a marketing and business development intern, and I was also recommended by Mr.Morgan as an SELF Assistant in CELC, NUS. 

Despite the financial benefit I get from these works(which can roughly afford me to pay the movie tickets and dinner bills when hanging out with my girlfriend, you have my words, Yu.), these working experiences also provide me a flexible while also competitive environment to thrive, especially in Executive Coach International.

As I mentioned in the title of this post, I was expected to talk something about keeping learning a second language, and we are approaching nearer and nearer :)

Most of the time in ECI, I work with Kunqi(my supervisor) and Yuting(another full time intern), both of them were graduated from top universities in Singapore with honored degree, and also are equiped with tremendous soft skills:

• Kunqi had been working as an Engineer(as I ought but do not want to be) and for government department for several years, what's more, as a life coach, she is excellent in communicating with people from different backgrounds and industries; multi-tasks, as well as working under pressure whilst still be positive and energetic.
• Yuting, a quite simple and cute girl, is really dependable and cooperative, also quite good at writing, I am already one of her blog's fans, here is the first step of her SEO,  http://withloveyuting.blogspot.sg/ , check it out, unlike other soul chicken soups, her words is quite touching due to her sincerity.

It's the experience of working with these talented people makes me realize my lack of ability in operating English as a tool in business environment. I mean, I have worked for Netgains, and UCweb's international product team, both of them are English speaking workshops, while being a 'marketer' and 'business developer' is really different from working with geeks. It requires more dimensions of the use of a language.

Aiming at my existing weaknesses, I have made a list for myself, remember, even you cannot hit the mark(as good as a native speaker), at least you should try your best to hit your own ceiling!

• Practice more on telephone speaking, I don't like making calls, I am even not that good at making calls in Chinese, so definitely I will do more in this part, I have already saved several great instructions to my Instapaper, but more importantly, I have to 'practice' more!
• Be a better E-mail writer, my words in mails can be confusing sometimes especially when trying to explain something abstract, and my style of writing should be more business like. I am already working on this: I get a lot of chance to practice everyday, and I also use some phrases other people are using in business communication mails for reference.
• Stop using bilingual dictionary, this is the first suggestion Mr. Morgan gave to me, thanks to IPAD's embedded dictionary, I am almost there!
• Write more blogs, as what I am doing right now.
• Make friends with  new words everyday, and look into the whole package of the use of this word.
• Do spelling check all the time!

Talking about new words: I read an article written by  David K. Williams on my Instapaper today, called 'The Case for hire Under-Qualified Employers', really an inspired one, but I am not going to tell you the lesson I learnt from this article, but a word: GEAR.

Of course I know what does 'GEAR' mean, but I realized that I have never ever ever ever used this word in any of my articles or daily talk, so I think it's gonna be a great initiative to use this word in my post today! So I checked it out in my dictionary inside my IPAD, here it is:

• as a noun, one of a set of toothed wheels that work together to alter the relation between the speed of a driving mechanism and the speed of the driven parts.
• as a noun, informal equipment that is used for a particular purpose.
• as a verb, design or adjust the gears in a machine to give a specified speed or power output.
• gear down, change to a lower gear.
• gear for, make ready or prepared: A nation geared for war!
• gear up, equip of prepare oneself: The region started to gear up for the tourist season.

It's also quite fascinating to know that this word originated from Middle English, and came from Scandinavian in the first place, (You can easily distinguish a word is from north Europe or French, at least I may).

OK, really late now, to leave a happy ending to this post, please allow me to show off a little bit:  

I am doing my best to gear up for the bigger challenges!