How I mastered English through sheer Anger
I was once so angry that I reached this current level of understanding English, the level you see right now.
It was in the summer of 2016.
I wasn’t particularly angry at the time, until a certain event occurred. Looking back, it probably wasn’t that significant, but, to put it briefly, the main cause was an English teacher I had at the time. It might have been a childish reason, but I was just a kid back then.
During that summer, fueled by anger, I took the first hardcover English book I could find at home (I remember the title was "Frankenstein") and tried to read it.
I didn’t have my laptop, internet, TV, or even a paper dictionary at the time. I was furious and struggled to read the book.
On my first read, I understood only about 1-5% of the entire book. But I kept going. As I struggled, a question kept nagging me: "How do we learn a new language as babies without any prior language to compare it to?"
I pondered this, formulating theories and growing angrier, until suddenly, it clicked.
As time passed, I began to understand more. I couldn’t believe it, so I pressed on, driven by my anger. I continued to read, and one particular sentence stayed with me:
"I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge."
This sentence encapsulated my entire experience. The word "ardent" appeared 20 times in the book, reinforcing the emotions I felt as I read.
Throughout this experience, I wasn’t just trying to spell the words in my mind or force myself to understand them; I was genuinely trying to visualize the scenes and grasp the meanings that were barely comprehensible to me.
In the end, I realized I wasn’t really angry at my teacher but more so at myself. After reading the same book more than 20 times, I stopped, lay down, and contemplated, "Maybe I’m just dreaming."
The next day, I tested whether it was all just a dream. It wasn’t. I finally understood everything. For some very specific slang, I still had to look up definitions, but usually, the context alone was enough for comprehension.
That’s it. It turns out you really can achieve things simply by trying.