Saturday, November 13, 2010

I'm having the grumps today.

Last night I was reading other English blogs randomly and there were quite a few which I found incredible.
I was left awe-inspired, thinking,

‘When the hell will I be able to speak like a native speaker?’

There are people who are bilinguals, not necessarily born or grew up in English speaking countries, but became bilinguals by studying incredibly hard.

The question is; how they did it?

I watch TV, read local papers and/or novels everyday – so I do understand what people say most of the time.
But it doesn’t mean that I can remember every single word they use.

I read someone writing about how she learned English – what she did was watching the same TV drama episode time and time again until her brain permanently memorise every single word being used in the episode.

Sometimes I repeat what the characters say as I watch TV shows.
I remember the phrase just for a few seconds and then forget.

There are days I question myself if I suffer from mild dementia.
I definitely have some sort of memory problem.
It might have something to do with my epilepsy, my memory used to be pretty good before developing this condition at 16.

When I try to explain things in a long sentence, somewhere in between my brain gets confused because I start wondering if I’ve said the same thing twice, or if I’ve forgot to say something important.
And of course, it is likely to happen more often when I talk about something I’m not very familiar with.

There is a possibility where my brain prioritizes information to input – because I have no problem soaking up all the necessary information in work situation.
My brain seems to pick up things quickly enough.

Then again, my brain switches off when I don’t want it to switch off, and I feel this problem is getting worse as I age.

Maybe my brain converts verbal information into visual information too quickly.
I don’t know.

Is the situation similar to me skimming through pages as I read books, rather than reading every details and words? – In that way I can picture the scenes in my mind?

I call the symptom “Abstract memory syndrome”.
I often struggle to find right words while I’m in conversation with someone.
I can remember part of them, usually the first 2 letters or the rhythm of them.
It disturbs me enormously when I want to express my complex emotions or amazement I felt in certain circumstances…because it can be only described by the particular word or the expression.

I may be able to substitute that with something else, but it won’t feel completely right – I know the word I want to use, but somehow I can’t remember that on the spot.
It distracts me and I lose the plot as a result.
But I remember them when other people use those words in their talk. …Then after a few minutes the extracted old memory would be gone. Fuck, fuck, fuuuuck! Fuck my brain!

It’s time to stop now as I started experiencing the bad migraine – Hope I'll be okay in few hours.

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