For non-native speakers, many would admit that English is easy-to-pick up language, but extremely hard to master. Although English is the native language in my country, most of my fellow men including me, speak in mother tongue. This habit caused most of us to think in our non-English language and there can be nothing worse than this, when it comes to language mastering.
In my country education system, great emphasis is placed based on the examinations results. Hence, a lot of us were actually trained to be "exam-smart" instead of really knowing what we were taught. I am a victim of such system and grew up thinking that there are only 2 types of people in the world. Those who know how to speak and write English, and those who not. Equiped with this mentality, I entered the society after I graduated and prepared to earn big bucks. I may have stuck with this wrong concept if I have not join a company which although belongs to the technology sector, focuses a lot on the written English language. Being an Engineer, I tended to write with too many technical jargons and descriptions. Not understanding that the people sitting at the top of the management are not technically trained, I suffered. The management are good in business and operations, hence it is important that I write in a way that they can understand and appreicate. As my boss always say, "You write for others to understand, and not just for yourself."
Through the years, I begin to improve my command of English gradually. I admit that I am still pretty bad in this language, but I like to share on my past lessons learnt. One of the main focus that I felt that its hard to find in the Internet are the explanations of words which loosely used interchangeably, even though they do not meant the same meaning. Hope this set of information will be useful for those who wishes to improve their English, use the appropriate words, and also develop interests in this most widely used working language in the world.
