While growing up and studying English at school, I was able to get by without much effort: I became the teacher’s classroom assistant and remained in this role for eleven years. Meanwhile, the most effective English language education I received was from my dad, the most diligent self-taught English learner around me.

Dad is a successful salesman with English skills playing to his advantage. He didn’t start learning English until he graduated from the naval academy, when he realized how important English was and decided that it would help his career. He bought himself the four-book textbook series of New Concept English — a popular series among Chinese learners in recent decades. He recited every passage one by one and over and over again, along with studying thoroughly music lyrics and lines from classic films. He crashed some courses sitting in on classes at an ESL-immersive university. Within a year, he even started to make a little money on the side as an amateur translator during the city-wide annual trade fairs. At some point, he started to use his skills to build connections with potential clients and win them over by volunteering to tutor their kids in English.

To people who don’t know him well…

I was very moved in my first class teaching at the Community English Program when I invited my students to write on a large poster about what they think the classroom should look like. The first student who came up put two words down in bold, “To respect.” I asked: “Can you elaborate on this word you wrote?” This student responded with something that had I never expected to bring up myself: “to respect each other’s accent.” I added these words onto this poster, and said to the class: “Yes, only to laugh with; never to laugh at.”