I Believe I Can Fly

By  Zhang Tongyu

‘I believe I can fly’ is the theme song of the American film Space Jam. It is said that it is written for Michael Jordan, the famous basketball player. Now it  has become the representative song of NBA in America. The spirit of the song is to encourage people to do their best to realize their dreams. My lifelong dream is to open a window onto the western world by mastering English language. I like the western culture, and want to go around the world freely, so I took the chance to be a distance learner.

After one year’s distance learning, I have made some progress, in getting the sense of English, achieving good learning grades, and making some new friends -- not only professional tutors, but also diligent learners. Of course, the most important is to know myself better through distance learning.

Looking back the studying experience in the last year, I don’t think, to be honest, that I have done my best to study, although I have passed the final exam of four courses, English in Daily Life, English at Leisure, English at Work and English in Current Affairs, . After studying in the first term, I scored nearly eighty, so I felt that the courses were easy, and spent less time on studying. Sometimes I went to tutorial after having a brief look at textbooks. In the end, I received only sixties for the last two courses.

For an example, when I studied the Activity four, Unit four of English in daily life, I spent a lot of time on listening to the cassette about the conversation between David and Jin Hong, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, and did the exercises carefully. So I could remember some details on it now. That is the reward of studying hard. If I had done all exercises like this all the time, I believe I would have made a huge progress. The main reason of the problem is the misunderstanding of distance learning, especially in making plans and learning strategies.

Several days ago, when I listened to the lecture on a guide to success 2, I was shocked by the problems pointed out by professor Wang Tong.  I thus made self-examination on my last year experience. How to be a successful distance learner? I think that there must be three aspects, longing for dream, stable state, and scientific approach.

‘Longing for dream’ means you must have enthusiasm and hope in life, and have a desire to do something, or to be someone. So you don’t say that you can’t do this or that. You must be successful if you make up your mind to do it by yourself, because you will be what you want to be.

The meaning of ‘Stable state’ is that you must have these characters in three years, such as self-confidence, determination, and persistence. You should have plenty of courage to overcome difficulties in spite of hard work, housework, and shortage of time. The on-and-off working habit is a deadly enemy of language learning.

What’s the meaning of ‘Science approach’? You should choose the suitable ways and spend enough time on your English skills. The key point is, according to the advice given by a guide of success and tutors, to study step by step, and to observe the discipline. In another word, you should be an excellent manager of yourself.

The problems have been founded, and the solutions have been founded too. What’s about the next year? There is an old saying, ‘a wise man never makes the same mistake twice.’ Success depends on the way you do things. During the past year, I get some practical experience of learning online. In the next year, I will make some adjustment, including attitude, planning, time arrangement, and approach, so on.

Finally, I want to say, as a distance learner who wants to upgrade my English from intermediate to advanced level, Beiwaionline has given me a very good opportunity to study. In fact, great changes will certainly take place in my future, if I do my best to study. Beiwaionline is just like sky which is a huge space for communication.

In developing my English skills, I must have capabilities to open various windows, so I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky!