The impact that English has to our life is beyond words. It is one of the major courses to kids ever since they start their primary schools. In some areas, teachers even get toddlers fumbling with A.B.C in kindergartens. With Olympics being held in Beijing in 2008 and World Exposition in Shanghai 2010, English spree seems not going to die out very soon but will continue to grow.

To some people, it’s a big release, when seeing themselves graduate from the university and they don’t need to touch English anymore. Kiss you, bye-bye, someone exclaimed. While to some others, miserable is how they describe themselves. After years and years of study, some people, including me, still want continue their “love” with English. “I can’t just throw it away as I do with a textbook,” someone said here in this BBS. So, what to do then?

Well, don’t feel depressed. You are more than right to continue your “love” with English. How to do it? Well, easy! Just treat it as a hobby. If you look at the people around you, you will see almost all of them have hobbies. Some of them like sports, some like shopping, some enjoy playing majian… The list can go on and on. So, what’s wrong to treat it as your hobby? I know this sounds very bizarre to many people, but who cares.

Once we decide what our hobby is, it’s vital important that we need to take a good look at this particular “hobby”. As we all know, it consists of four major components – listening, speaking, reading and writing. It’s almost not practical to try to be perfect with all these four pillars. (Remember, I define it as a hobby, not a career.) So, ask yourself what you really want to pursue. If you are fond of translation, go for it. If you choose reading, well, why not?

As this hobby is quite different from others, we should therefore, need to work out a plan to make the hobby more practical. To me, this hobby requires faith, action and patience. Let’s talk about faith first. I trust you all agree with me that confidence and faith on ourselves should be the first step when you start our journey. This is more like “love-taking”. If you don’t think you can fall in love with a boy or a girl, what’s the point to try it. After all, you are just wasting your time.

Now, once you have the confidence, the trust you have on yourself. What need to be done next is to work out a plan. (Of course, you must make sure that you will follow it). Let’s say, you want to “fall in love” with translation. What you may choose to do is to go to a library and pick your “girl/boy friend”, that is the book that you want to “fall in love”. As there are many excellent Chinese versions being translated already, it’s quite easy to compare the work that you have done against what others have tried.

Lastly, we shouldn’t be too hard to ourselves. Remember, this hobby is totally different from others. You’ve got to give yourself time and patience. Again, this is very much like “love-talking”. You need to give yourself time to play around. Great Wall was not built overnight, right? So is our love.