Like a lot of my peers, I struggled with Mandarin.

We were taught to repeatedly copy characters and constantly tested on them. The hope was that they will somehow be drilled into our memories.

I recall consistently failing these "listen-then-write" (ting1 xie3) tests, because I had no idea what the spoken words looked like as characters.

Similarly, when I looked at a book or newspaper (these were particularly difficult), many of the characters didn't invoke "sounds" in my head.

Hence, I couldn't read them.

There was a now-obvious disconnect between the spoken and written characters.

Growing up in an English-speaking environment, I hardly heard Mandarin being spoken.

And being so poor at Mandarin, all the while being chided for being bad at it, caused me to hate the language.

One of the major deciding factors for my entering a polytechnic instead of a junior college was to avoid ever having to read another Mandarin character.

In contrast, I love the English language. So much so, I studied for and attained a Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) so I can help others to learn it.

I started reading (English books) around the same time my elder brother (who is 2 years older) did, and I have shelves of books, most of which I've finished reading multiple times.

And, considering my penchant for picking up words and tones in other languages, something went horribly wrong with my education in Mandarin.

In an attempt to start rectifying this and overcoming my fear of it, I've started to watch Chinese drama series and I've recently bought a book in Mandarin. My first one in over a decade!

It has pinyin over the words, but hey, it's a start. And I plan to read a little of it every day.

Wish me luck!